“We had to put a bit of a French touch” – Alpine boss Laurent Rossi has explained why they have two F1 team principals in Marcin Budkowski and Davide Brivio.
After Cyril Abiteboul’s departure from Renault, now known as Alpine, they have two F1 bosses – executive director Marcin Budkowski, and new racing director Davide Brivio. Brivio has previous motorsport experience as the Suzuki boss in MotoGP.
The way things are ‘organised’ now is certainly very French, but it doesn’t lend itself to gearing up for a successful season.
Alpine will however, have Davide Brivio in charge of trackside operations. He and Marcin Budkowski will share team principle responsibilities.#F1 pic.twitter.com/uFljplj2Y2
— Ashley Woodhouse (@AshWoody90) March 3, 2021
CEO Laurent Rossi has explained why and how this has been done, and how do they intend the maximum benefit out of this.
“Marcin will be in charge of the development of the chassis and the powertrain, so he’ll coordinate the whole development of the car. Davide will be the racing director.
“So the two of them will work in tandem to extract the best out of the car, that has been designed to put us into the best position in the future. The rest of the team are keeping their existing line structures: to Marcin in Enstone or to myself in Viry.
Alpine F1 team executive director speaks out on the new structure
Budkowski believes that as long as the responsibilities are clean, the new structure will significantly help them in their operations. It will allow him to not attend all races and instead focus on the 2022 car when the new regs kick in. Brivio, meanwhile, has legendary experience in handling people on the trackside.
“We’re a French team at the end, and we had to put a bit of a French touch in the organizational structure as well!”
“Managing a team and going to all races is very, very difficult,” he said. “For me, it’s personally great to have Davide on board, apart from all the skills he brings from his other motorsport experiences. It means I won’t have to go to all the races.
“It means I will probably do the majority of them, but probably start skipping a few in the second half of the season. We have somebody in Davide who has got a lot of trackside experience, a lot of soft skills, acquired as a team manager in other categories.
