‘I was going to turn them into a top-three team’ – Szafnauer opens up on Alpine stint and the key reasons behind his exit

Having then felt unhappy with the squad’s handling of the Piastri fallout – which he has said that he was not responsible for – Szafnauer was quizzed on why he did not choose to walk away from Alpine at that point.

“I couldn’t have predicted the future,” the former team boss explained. “I had a contract, I wanted to do the best I can for my team. I’m still working hard, I’m still delivering relative to today. We were sixth in that championship but we had a couple of podiums.

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“We’re scoring points regularly – it wasn’t a disaster. We’re in the midfield. It’s not like today – I don’t know where they are today, ninth or something in the championship. Today it’s a disaster.

“Back then, yeah, it’s a half-step back, but sometimes you take a half-step back to take two steps forward. The recruitment was happening, good people were coming, I was going to turn that team into a top-three team, which is what we wanted to do.”

As part of this, Szafnauer says that he was working with the FIA to help with power unit equalisation, something that he believes would have helped Alpine to be more on a par with their rivals.