Dre’s Newswipe: Alpine Reshuffle, Ocon/Sainz Team Moves

Carlos Sainz heads to Williams, Alpine has YET ANOTHER reshuffle, Esteban Ocon heads to Haas and Checo STAYS at Red Bull. Time for a Newswipe!

Never miss a post

Sign up for our monthly newsletter so you don’t miss any posts or updates!

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us. By subscribing, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with our privacy policy.

Read time: 8 mins

Okay, we’ve had a LOT of news drop in the land of Formula 1 after the Belgian Grand Prix, so with that in mind, I felt like it was time for another Newswipe to bring it altogether. So in this edition, another management reshuffle at Alpine and a potential replacement for the departing Esteban Ocon, as he confirms a Haas move, Carlos Sainz commits to his future, and Red Bull commits to Sergio Perez. Let’s talk about it. 

As mentioned in my Race Review post on Sunday, Bruno Famin has stepped down as Alpine team principal to focus on his main role as VP of Renault’s Motorsport division. His replacement was named this morning as Oliver Oakes, the runner of junior team Hitech, will become the team’s fifth boss in the last five years. I know Oakes comes with a lot of respect, he’s still just 36 years old, making him the second youngest team principal ever in F1, and has done a brilliant job turning Hitech into a top-tier junior team in F2. Paul Aron sits second in the Championship as we speak. 

But it does raise some further questions about the state of the team. When the press release came out announcing this move, new special advisor Flavio Briatore was commenting on the story. While at the same time, former team boss Famin admitted there was a difference in vision between the pair about where they saw the team heading. It does make me wonder just how much influence Flavio has in his role, especially given his first actions when he rolled up in Barcelona was to immediately push for Carlos Sainz. More on that in a bit.

There’s also the questionable background of Oakes’ Hitech team. We all know its Russian backed, and we know Hitech lodged a formal bid through the FIA to apply for the grid in 2026. A bid that was ultimately rejected. And when Nikita Mazepin puts a wink emoji on his Instagram on the same day, only four months after the EU threw out his sanctions for his Dad’s involvement in the war on Ukraine, it should be raising more inclinations of “This might be sus.” But I fear it will only get murmured on Twitter and in private circles. 

As for their second seat, it was reported today that Jack Doohan is close to securing a seat for 2025. It means for the first time since Romain Grosjean, Alpine are set to promote a driver from their academy. I’m happy for Jack, he was a very solid F2 driver, winning four races in the class and finishing third behind Pourchaire and Vesti in the 2023 Championship. Given the extra year as a test driver, it’s a sensible hire. Pour one out for Victor Martins, who hasn’t seen a crack in the pavement he hasn’t stepped on.

After six months of being the Number 1 name on F1’s free agency big board, Carlos Sainz finally announced where he was heading for 2025, and it turns out he chose Williams, signing with Grove on what seems to be a 2+X years contract given the language of “25, 26’ and beyond…” has been used to describe the deal. 

And the timing on this one was kind of funny because amazingly, more of the silly season has revolved around Esteban Ocon in recent days. This time last week, it was announced he was joining Haas on a multi-year deal. A couple of days later, former Alpine team boss Marcin Budkowski let the cat out of the bag that he had a secret seat fitting at Williams and tried to leave Alpine mid-season for Williams, but Alpine blocked the deal. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Jack Doohan, but I digress.

I’ll get to Sainz in a minute, but a quick word on Ocon to Haas. Great deal for all parties. Ocon has done an exceptional job in his years at Enstone. A rock-solid driver who came into his own once he adapted to his new team, kept Fernando Alonso honest in the two years they were teammates and is handling Pierre Gasly well too. I don’t think his reputation as a locker room poison has ever truly held up and I just don’t think Alpine’s the right platform to push up the field in an elite class that has most of its seats locked in long-term (Norris, Piastri, Verstappen, Leclerc, etc.)

Haas are a team riding the crest of a wave. Hulkenberg has done a very solid job being an anchor for the Banbury team and Ocon is easily on his level, if not a little bit better in my opinion. I also think he’ll be a great yardstick for incoming Brit Ollie Bearman. Haas has a genuine shot at finishing 2024 as a Top 6 team and they look on the up after a horrible set of years in the back end of the Steiner era. Fresh management, fresh development philosophy, fresh driver line-up, the previous stench is mostly gone. I like it.

As for Carlos Sainz to Williams… This feels weird. I think the Spaniard made all the right moves. Explore the market, entertain all the offers available, but also hold out and see if Red Bull took the aggressive option of firing Sergio Perez, or if Brackley took the conservative option and NOT put Andrea Kimi Antonelli straight in with the factory Mercedes. Either one of those options (And they did look feasible at times), could have been on, and given they’re the only two teams who give you a viable Championship shot, I would have waited to see what would happen. But with Perez staying till at least season’s end (We think), and Antonelli starting to show his full promise in F2, they seemed off the table. And out of what’s left, Williams seemed the most sensible move.

Audi’s still reeling from Andreas Seidl walking away from the project just 18 months out from the team’s debut. And while Alpine running Mercedes power units may turn out to be a net positive, it can’t feel good joining a team that will have five team principals in the last five years and is actively looking to give up its factory status. That just left Williams. 

If you’re James Vowles, no wonder you’ve spent the last 24 hours gassing up the ever-loving shit out of your new hire. Carlos Sainz has been a Top 6 driver in F1 for over half a decade now, with multiple teams. He’s won a Grand Prix for each of the last three years, and he’s 5th in the Championship right now. Williams is sitting ninth in the Constructors, has four points on the whole season and if anything has probably gotten away with larger criticism of a season that’s completely gone to shit. 

Logan Sargeant was probably never F1 level in the first place. He was a decent upper-medium F2 talent who probably would have been a better fit in IndyCar’s system and who was already hired when Vowles took over. Vowles never seemed sure about keeping him on, dancing around employment questions all through the back end of 2023, eventually giving him another chance for 2024 after the season finished. And as much as he has improved marginally, it was never enough to justify getting equal treatment within Williams over the far better Albon. And even he has regressed in 2024, mostly down to a car that’s got a horrible chassis. It started the season 15 kilos overweight, something Vowles reckoned was worth nearly half a second in lap time, cancelling out all that hard work they’d done in 2023. 

This isn’t a signing, it’s daylight robbery for Williams. All of a sudden, an Albon/Sainz pairing (Or BONSAI as I’ve seen it labelled), is the best midfield-level team on the grid. And I suspect Sainz was likely wowed by buying into Vowles’ vision that Williams will be a podium-contending team again in 3-4 years. For his sake, I hope he’s right, because right now, Williams has gone backwards again, not forwards, and Sainz is signing away his prime years to a team that right now, cannot score points comfortably. 

Turns out that same Monday evening, Red Bull announced it’s going to stick with Sergio Perez for the rest of the 2024 season, despite an enormous amount of pressure from fans and journalists for him to be sacked mid-season. 

Ultimately as others have pointed out, and I broke down last week, there was not as Boris Johnson used to say: “An oven-ready replacement” ready to go. You’d be dumping three and a half years of Checo and data you have on him to promote one of your other three drivers instead – Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda or Liam Lawson. 

Between them, Daniel Ricciardo’s been fine since sorting out his chassis issues but could still make a reasonable argument Tsunoda has been better this year. The team does not believe Tsunoda has the mental fortitude to compete at the highest level otherwise he’d have gotten a chance by now, and Liam Lawson’s sample size is likely just too small to gamble another promising junior’s career on. It’s worth an added mention that Isack Hadjar is forcing himself into F1 contention for 2025 with his excellent F2 season, but given the general down sentiment on the series as a whole right now, he’s likely not a serious contender yet. 

I had a kernel of respect for Red Bull for acknowledging in this decision that they might be part of the problem and maybe they haven’t been as supportive of their driver as they could have been. Which, given that Helmut Marko has constantly run to his friends in the German and Dutch media at every opportunity to bitch about him, says to me that there’s a clear difference in opinion and in approach on how to best handle Checo. Again, not exactly confidence-inspiring. 

But what’s jarring to me and something that I feel should be talked about more, is the greater landscape of Red Bull as an umbrella. Think about it. Sergio Perez has scored 28 points in his last EIGHT Grand Prix and has had somewhere between the best and second-best car on the grid. That’s 3.5 points per round. And there was a tangible, plausible argument that on outright performance he is still the second-best driver in your camp! 

This is with Red Bull having four cars on the grid to best evaluate talent and the longest-running Driver Academy in F1. If this is the best you can do right now; and if you cannot definitively upgrade on Sergio Perez right now, then your academy isn’t working properly and the whole umbrella needs to be looked at because this just isn’t good enough and its a damning indictment on Red Bull as a whole.

As I said last week, I think this is still probably the right move for Red Bull in the short term. Even more so now Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg have all committed to other teams for 2025, meaning you don’t have a driver in free agency that again, is a slam-dunk better shout than what Checo is right now. That second seat has been a poisoned chalice ever since Ricciardo was fed up with it in 2018. It likely cost them a Constructors Championship in 2021, and with McLaren reducing Red Bull’s championship lead this year to just 42 points, history is likely to repeat itself.

About the Author:

Dre Harrison

Somehow can now call himself a Production Coordinator at the Motorsport Network, coming off the back of being part of the awkward Johto Era at WTF1. All off a University Project that went massively out of hand. Weird huh?

Motorsport101 uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Click here to read more.

Search

What are you looking for?