Blockbuster F1 transfer story with long-lasting effect on three teams

02 August 2023 , 05:00

843     0

Oscar Piastri was an Alpine junior – until his high-profile departure for McLaren (Image: Getty Images)

It will forever remain an iconic silly season story among Formula 1 fans on Twitter.

"I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 have put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year."

That post is still live on Oscar Piastri's account, a year on from when he first pressed send. That was about an hour and a half after Alpine had indeed released a statement 'confirming' that the Aussie had been promoted to a race seat.

The warning signs were there straight away. The press release gave the impression it had been written hastily, as a response to the previous day's news that Fernando Alonso would be leaving for Aston Martin.

I remember, as I wrote the breaking news story for the Mirror Sport website, thinking it was odd that there was no quote from Piastri himself included in the release. A little over 90 minutes later, it became obvious why it was missing.

Sebastian Vettel warns of looming F1 ban and is "very worried about the future"

He found out with the rest of us that Alpine planned to promote him from his role as reserve driver. He had won the Formula 2 championship the previous year – completing a hat-trick of feeder series titles – but was forced to sit on the sidelines with no place available for him in the big time.

Looking at his situation with manager Mark Webber, he realised the team wanted to keep Alonso for longer. And so the deal was struck with McLaren to join for 2023. Whether or not he truly informed Alpine of this remains disputed.

The row rumbled on for several weeks and had to be adjudicated by the FIA's Contracts Recognition Board. It eventually ruled that Alpine did not have a legitimate race seat contract with the Aussie and, shortly after that was made public, McLaren announced him as the replacement for the departing Daniel Ricciardo.

Alpine beat McLaren in the constructors' standings last year and looked to be a team on the up. And at the start of this season, when his new team arrived in Bahrain with a car months behind its development schedule, it began to look as though Piastri might regret his decision.

But the situation has changed drastically. McLaren have made remarkable improvements and are one of the front-runners behind Red Bull. Piastri has already led a handful of laps, qualified on the front row of a Sprint grid, finished second in that short form race and has come a whisker away from a first F1 podium.

And his team is delighted with the rookie. Ricciardo is a very popular man but never found consistency in papaya, while his fellow Aussie has hit the ground running and earned effusive praise from the likes of CEO Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella, who believe they are set for years with a pairing of Piastri and Lando Norris.

In contrast, Alpine are a team in crisis. Few would argue that Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly aren't capable drivers, but all their issues lie elsewhere. The number of top staff who have left in the last 18 months, most recently team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane, gives a sense of the discontent behind the scenes.

Unrealistic performance expectations from the Renault board can hardly be traced back to the Piastri saga. But it did leave their noses a little bloodied, embarrassed publicly by the blunder of not checking with the driver before putting out their press release, and by losing their star talent to their closest midfield rivals.

Piastri and McLaren are out-performing Alpine this season (Getty Images)

While they were the two teams at the centre of the argument, there was a third team which had its plans changed by the whole mess. Alonso's decision to leave for Aston Martin sparked this chain of events which led to Williams promoting a driver who was probably not ready for F1.

Mick Schumacher free to race for McLaren in 2023 after Mercedes deal reached

Logan Sargeant was supposed to spend another year learning his trade in F2, but here he is on the grid, 12 races into his F1 career. But this was neither plan A nor Plan B for the Grove-based team, who had been in negotiations with Alpine over a loan-style deal for Piastri.

The Aussie would have filled in for a year while Sargeant continued his development in F2. And Alpine would have had a driver with F1 experience on their hands a year later, when Alonso was more likely to leave.

Fans loved Alonso's Instagram post amid the chaos (fernandoalo_oficial/Instagram)

Piastri has been flourishing at McLaren this year (HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

But then the Spaniard did up sticks. Piastri was wanted first by his parent team and then by McLaren, who eventually got him. Williams turned to Nyck de Vries after his impressive Monza debut, but were beaten to his signature by AlphaTauri.

That's why F1 has its first full-time American driver in 15 years. And it's also why Williams are making a point of being extra patient with Sargeant – he may be yet to score a point, but the Floridian's learning curve has been steeper than expected.

But even aside from all those longer-term outcomes, it will forever be one of the iconic F1 silly season stories. With Alpine's public humiliation, a legal fight and Alonso's iconic thumbs-up post on Instagram amid all the anarchy his move to Aston Martin had caused, how could it not?

Daniel Moxon