Alpine owners Renault want to see the team achieve success sooner rather later, despite the stated 100-race plan that Szafnauer and his colleagues had put in place.
It’s no secret that Enstone fell back during the Lotus/Genii period, and even in the early days of Renault’s second spell of ownership there was not enough investment.
Over his 18-month spell at Alpine Szafnauer led the push for change in consultation with the key technical players, identifying weaknesses and the key areas of focus, and setting in motion a plan to update the team’s infrastructure. It didn’t hurt that he had recently gone through a similar process as Racing Point transitioned into Aston Martin, so he had a good insight into what can be done if the budget is available.
On his watch a list of major infrastructure improvements, topped by a new simulator, was approved as the next stage of the rebuilding process.
The anomaly associated with the American’s sudden departure from Alpine is that such projects inevitably take time to be completed and to pay dividends, so the results won’t be seen until two or three years down the line.
To be fair, his predecessors long before Szafnauer’s arrival at the team had been working hard to close the gap to the established frontrunners.
"We've worked exhaustively,” says Alpine technical director Matt Harman. “It's one of the reasons why I don't go to all the races, as we have an awful lot of work to do back in the factory. In terms of designing the cars, and the quality of our race car and what we do, we're very proud of in the way we've moved that forward.
“But equally the way we operate the team, the business systems within the team, the efficiencies that we've managed to drive, some of the quality initiatives that we're still working on to make sure that's best in class, it all takes time to put in place and to get the organisation, and also get people used to operating in a different manner, and having that culture of continuous improvement.
“That has been a mission of mine for the last five years. I'd like to think you'll see sparkles of that in every single area, and be it the way we do our pitstops, or the way we do our base engineering.”
Harman cites one example of an innovation which is now paying off.
“We have a digital mock up or DMU room, where we design the car,” he says. “Fundamentally, it's a room with a big CAD screen. We don't have a plastic mock-up of the car anymore, for when we look and see whether it's any good or not.
Source: Autosport