Oliver Oaks’ sudden departure from Alpine last week was a major blow to an organization that needs a steady person at the top of the hierarchy.
The French team had seen the spinning cast of Team Principal attempt to pilot the ship in recent years, but soon afterwards set off due to differences of opinion with parent company Renault.
The Hitech F2/F3 boss arrived last August, and ultimately suggested that the team is on the right track in Formula 1 following the revival of the controversial but experienced Flavio Briatore.
However, as Oaks leaves the role for what the team claims “personal reasons,” Alpine is now in the same position as the previous year.
Briatore took over the role of Oaks in the near future, but at age 75, he could potentially need others to work with him and handle daily responsibilities on the truck.
Alpine advised how to find a new team principal
Former Ferrari and Williams F1 engineer Rob Smedley has identified the qualities needed to make Oaks a successful Alpine team principal.
For Smedley, the ideal candidate must not only be familiar with the political and financial environment of Formula 1, but also respect Briartoll’s realm with his two-person top management structure.
“Here you need to get someone who’s a good foil and works very well with Flavio because if you don’t have such a strong relationship, you can’t build that relationship and work together, and don’t compromise that much between the two parties – that won’t work,” Smedley explained in the F1 Nation Podcast
“If you have two alphas doing the exact same thing, it simply won’t work. It simply has a short shelf life, everything fails and your team is in a worse situation.
“So, I think that’s the key here: someone ready to work the way Flavio is molding their teams.
“Because Flavio is the de facto CEO of the team, how do you find another CEO like Ollie who could have had all the experience, not from Formula 1.
“How do you find someone else who has an F1 experience, someone who has business insight, someone who knows what it takes to turn a team around, but who can work with Flavio? It’s not an easy one.”
Over the past decade or so, some teams have deviated from the previous structure in which one person was in charge of the entire organization.
Also, teams tend to promote technology leaders to management, and the most well-known example is Andrea Stella’s successful promotion at McLaren in 2023.
Smedley believes Alpine cannot afford to go in one extreme direction. Especially when you have someone like Briartoll who has experience dealing with the board of automakers, you can’t afford to go in one extreme direction.
Instead, he believes that Alpine should take the route somewhere in the middle as they need alternatives like the Oaks.
“We tend to bring in very advanced engineers and create team principals,” he explained.
“Each team has a different version of team principal, so it is highly dependent on teams. So there is a Toto Wolf version of Team Principal who is CEO and shareholder, who does everything and arbitrates all decisions, and has a long-term view of all strategies and boards.
“Then there are other versions of Team Principals, people like Chief Operations Engineers and people who are very focused on the race team.
“Ollie’s work was completely different. It was in the middle. So it can’t be purely an engineer. You have to become someone with business and political insight in the Formula 1 field.
“Whether you’re going to take someone who’s done it before or someone who’s never been a principal on a team but has all those values and attributes.
“They probably have a list of people they’re talking about and want to talk about, and that depends on whether they can find the right fit — either side of the fence, the people they’re talking to from their own perspective.”
