Alpine pair resign after poor start to F1 season

The Alpine team have reorganised their design department in the wake of a poor start to the season and the departure of their technical boss.

Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly qualified on the back row of the grid at the first race of the season in Bahrain and finished 17th and 18th respectively.

Technical director Matt Harman and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer have resigned from their roles.

They will be replaced by a new structure under team boss Bruno Famin.

Mirroring the organisation introduced by McLaren early last year, Alpine will now have three technical directors responsible for key areas of design.

Ciaron Pilbeam has been promoted from head of race engineering to technical director responsible for performance.

Engineering will be led by Joe Burnell and aerodynamics by David Wheater.

Famin said in a team statement: “We have decided to make these organisational changes as we can clearly see that we are not where we want nor need to be in terms of performance level and it is time to take another step in terms of organisation and people.

“The new three-pillared structure with three technical directors, each specialising in different areas, will bring better work and collaboration across our technical areas and contribute to delivering performance from the factories to the race track.”

Alpine is the name for Renault’s F1 team, with the French car company choosing to use it to promote its niche lightweight sportscar brand.

After finishing fourth in 2022 they fell to sixth in 2023 and made major changes to their car design philosophy for this season in an attempt to move back up the grid.

They started the season accepting it would take time to learn how to optimise their new car, but its lack of performance last weekend was an unwelcome surprise.

The team’s engine is also known to be the least powerful on the grid. It has fallen behind since an engine development freeze was imposed on F1 in 2022.

This restricts any changes to power-units to those made for reliability reasons.

The other suppliers – Honda, Mercedes and Ferrari – have been able to find performance gains this way, whereas Alpine have failed to exploit the rules as effectively.