Oliver Oakes admits that he’s still learning about Alpine
New Alpine Formula 1 boss Oliver Oakes sees his role as someone “who takes the bullet for the team” and gives the Enstone staff support and direction.
Oakes was named during the summer break as the new team principal after the departure of Bruno Famin, working under the overall direction of Flavio Briatore.
He says he arrived knowing that he would need time to learn about the operation and determine what can be done better.
“I didn’t come in with any preconceived ideas in terms of what I thought about the team,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, until you’re in somewhere, you don’t know the people closely.
“You don’t know what they’ve gone through. You read about it, and I’ve known certain members of the team, and had some snippets. But I didn’t come in with any preconceived ideas.
“I think you come with your own ethos and approach in terms of how you feel you need to build that trust, that unity and stability back in the team. But I think that’s sort of who you are as a person.
“That’s not because of actually the specific team. For me, I think I know pretty well some of the stories that have gone on at Enstone, sort of the long statements made, and I knew how that had a sort of adverse effect in different ways.
“So the main thing I came with, really, was a sort of clean sheet of paper of, right, where are we at now? What things have we done right? What haven’t we done right?
“And actually, you also want to listen a bit as well to some of that, because you need to get to the bottom of it. It’s never as simple as you know one person, one mistake. There’s always loads of things that have gone into it.”
Oakes insisted that there is now “a clear vision” of the direction to take.
“It’s a pretty special place, Enstone,” he noted. “I keep saying it, but there is a lot of knowledge there, it’s been in F1 a long, long time, as Flavio keeps reminding me daily!
“But because of that the place knows what it’s doing, it just genuinely needs some leadership, and it needs support.
“I’m going to say this because it’s on my shoulders, but I think it’s actually got a clear vision now and clear leadership with me and Flavio there. We’re committed, and as he does keep saying as well, I got the job because I live down the road!
“I enjoy being there, and it does require full commitment from those who are running it, and I think the place probably hasn’t had that for a couple of years.
“And I think that’s the biggest thing I wanted to bring, really, that there’s someone there who takes the bullet for the team, gives them the support and the direction they need.
“That was my only real sort of vision before starting. I actually felt it needed that. It needed someone there who was a racer, who understood what everybody was going through. I’ve just got to deliver, haven’t I?”
The biggest uncertainty in the camp concerns the 2026 power unit, with the Renault project in Viry to be abandoned in favour of a Mercedes customer supply, although the arrangement has not be formally confirmed.
“There’s obviously certain sensitive topics at the moment!,” said Oakes. “I think they’ve been spoken about a lot. I think what hasn’t been spoken about much is about what we plan to do at Enstone, by the same sort of token, really.
“Viry is undergoing a bit of an assessment of the project. And the same things going on at Enstone. We need to understand, actually, where we are good, where we need to improve, and also what changes need to be made as a small sort of evolution and step forward, particularly as we are coming into that transition now, with ’26 on the horizon. It’s a pretty big time in F1 at the moment.
“And I think, from my point of view, it’s quite fortunate to have landed straight after the shutdown that I think I’ve got a bit of time to influence the direction we’re going in, and make sure what happened the beginning of the year, and sort of decisions that were made last summer that caused that problem that we try to mitigate that.
“Because at the end of the day, this team hasn’t forgotten how to build a good race car and to go racing. It’s done that through every cycle of regulations, which is pretty impressive, really.”
Oakes stressed that the updates introduced at Spa paid off with a strong seventh place for Pierre Gasly at Zandvoort,
“I think was quite a good uplift for us, particularly made me look good being in the points on my first weekend!,” he said.
“But I think that was very, very positive, particularly from where the team started the beginning of the season. Full credit to them for that.
“We plan between now and the end of the year to bring a couple more [updates]. We definitely will bring a little bit more performance between now and the end of the year.
“At the end of the day, we want to continue I’d say that sort of recovery from the beginning of the year.”
Adam Cooper F1 