F1: Alpine Says Piastri Is Replacing Alonso, Oscar Says No Thanks: What’s Happening In F1’s Silly Season

After Fernando Alonso’s shocking announcement that he would be joining the Aston Martin team on a multi-year contract from 2023 onwards, Alpine announced that its reserve driver, the highly coveted Oscar Piastri who is the reigning F2 champion will replace the former two-time F1 world champion. But there has been a twist in the tale, as Piastri has tweeted that, he hasn’t signed a contract with Alpine and they announced him as their 2023 driver without his agreement.

“I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 has 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,” said the 21-year-old Australian who has won consecutive F3 and F2 world titles, a feat only previously achieved by Charles Leclerc of Ferrari and George Russell of Mercedes.

In the lead-up to Piastri’s statement, Alpine had announced that he would be partnering with Esteban Ocon 2023 onwards, but its press release didn’t include a quote from the Australian and was released at 2 am in Australia which would’ve meant that Australians wouldn’t have seen it.

“Oscar is a bright rare talent. We are proud to have nurtured and supported him through the difficult pathways of the junior formulae. Through our collaboration over the past four years, we have seen him develop and mature into a driver who is more than capable of taking the step up to Formula 1. As our reserve driver, he has been exposed to the team at the track, factory and testing, where he has shown the maturity, promise and speed to ensure his promotion to our second seat alongside Esteban,” said Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer in the statement.

So what happened? Well, the dominoes started rolling last Thursday when 4-time world champion Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement from the sport at the end of the season. The Aston Martin driver was expected to be re-signing from the team but there had been a possibility that he would call it quits thanks to the dismal performance of the car and the general lifestyle an F1 driver has to commit to with a 22-race season.

Aston Martin reportedly had asked Vettel to make up his mind as it had been planting a plan B with Alonso in the case the German decided to retire. On Wednesday, Vettel told the Aston Martin team that he would be retiring and on Monday out of the blue Alonso announced that he was joining Aston Martin on a multi-year contract.

Alonso himself was widely believed to be staying on at Alpine, but since Piastri’s F2 world championship there had been possibilities that this could be Alonso’s last season if his performance didn’t live up to the hype. Piastri had been nurtured by Renault, the parent of Alpine and he was anointed as its reserve driver for the 2022 season. Alpine had also locked a deal with McLaren that it could use his services in the case its own drivers weren’t available.

Alpine was in a bind. On one side it had a once-in-a-generation talent, waiting in the wings and on the otherwise it had a 2-time world champion who had returned from retirement to win his third. Alonso’s two world titles had come with Alpine’s former avatar Renault where he dethroned Michael Schumacher. Alonso is considered amongst the greatest F1 drivers to have lived even though his CV of 32 wins and 2 world titles doesn’t measure up to the statistics of Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.

Some rate him higher than Hamilton and Vettel and believe he is the greatest since Senna and Schumacher, but a combination of a combative selfish attitude, poor career choices and bad luck have resulted in the Spaniard missing a 3rd title three times in the last race of the season — in 2007, 2010 and 2012. He left F1 with an ill-fated spell with McLaren in 2018 only to win Le Mans twice and the Daytona WEC race cementing his credentials as one of the greatest race car drivers of all time. He returned to F1 at the age of 39 last year and at 41 right now is the oldest driver on the grid with most GP laps completed.

In 2021 he proved that he was performing at his peak and even helped Esteban Ocon win his maiden race in Hungary by putting a sterling defence up against Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes. He himself returned to the podium in Qatar. Alpine for its part renewed his contract for the 2021 season, but at the same time, it signed Ocon, a Frenchman on a long-term deal till 2025. As the 2022 season has progressed, Alonso’s performances have again dazzled and had it not been for rampant reliability issues, the Spaniard would’ve been ahead of Ocon in the driver’s championship. But combined together, both drivers have helped keep Alpine’s nose ahead of McLaren for P4 in the constructor’s championship.

Alpine’s plan was to offer Alonso an extension for a year and transition him to the WEC programme to finish his career off. In the meanwhile, it figured out a loan deal with Williams for Piastri so that he could join the team as its F1 driver in 2024 with a season of F1 under his belt. Alonso was never going to be happy with a 1 year F1 extension as he returned to F1 with the sole intention of winning a third title. After all, he had joined a middling team and put in the hard yards and wanted to be around when the car is competitive enough for wins. For Alonso, it is a question of his legacy. All the greats like Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Ayrton Senna, and Alain Prost (4 titles) had won at least 3 titles apart from his peers Schumacher, Hamilton and Vettel who managed to win more.

So he started negotiations in secret with Aston Martin. And when Vettel decided he would call it quits,  Lawrence Stroll, the Aston Martin F1 team owner and Alonso quickly moved to close a multi-year deal starting in 2023. At Aston Martin, Alonso will not need to deal with a driver of the calibre of Ocon who also gets the added advantage of being French in a French team. Alonso should have the measure of Lance Stroll, the son of Lawrence Stroll. Stroll has never outperformed a teammate in his career while right now Ocon is ahead of Alonso on points. He will be the de facto team leader and out of all the F1 teams, Aston Martin despite its sickly P9 constructor’s position is investing the most and has even attracted Dan Fallows from Red Bull as its technical director. The 2023 car will be the first Aston Martin that will have the Fallows imprint. Fallows of course is the acolyte of Adrian Newey, the genius behind Red Bull's success in the last decade and before that he helped Williams and McLaren dominate F1.

So after the sudden departure of Alonso, Alpine had to move fast to secure the services of Piastri. But the problem was that Alpine never imagined Alonso jumping ship that too so secretively and suddenly. It had been shopping Piastri to other teams. And Piastri’s management led by former Red Bull F1 driver Mark Webber had been exploring a shift to McLaren for the young Aussie. Webber had driven for Porsche in WEC after his F1 career had ended and developed a good relationship with Andreas Seidl who was the Porsche WEC boss and now is the team principal at McLaren.

In the last two years, McLaren has underperformed due to Daniel Ricciardo who had made a shock jump from Renault in 2021 which opened the door for Alonso to return to F1. Ricciardo was a much-fancied signing for McLaren but apart from his win at Monza last year, he has been handily outperformed by Lando Norris. He trails Norris by more than 60 points and if he had performed better McLaren would’ve been ahead of Alpine in the constructor’s championship. The same can be said for last year as McLaren narrowly missed on P3 from Ferrari.

Webber has been chatting up the McLaren team and pitching Piastri. It seems that Alpine had to secure a seat for Piastri by July 31 2022, at least that is what is being reported. But since Alpine got blind-sighted by Alonso, it seemingly failed to lock Piastri in. In fact, there are rumours that state that Piastri already has a deal locked in with McLaren and Ricciardo will be paid off by the Woking-based team to vacate the seat in 2023 despite the contract. Alpine is seemingly trying to block this as it believes that it has first right on Piastri’s services now that it has a vacancy.

Alpine believes it is legally covered, but at the same time, Piastri has said that he will not be driving for them next year.  This could also be perhaps a preemptive way for Alpine to ward off any potential suitors for Piastri. We could end in a situation with the exit of both Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo from F1 by the end of this year. Ricciardo is highly unlikely to be returning to Alpine after the way he left in 2020. He also has a desire to see through his contract at McLaren, but his performances may not leave the management any choice. In Piastri, McLaren gets the services of another Aussie and also one that is as highly rated as Norris if not more. 

The irony is that Ricciardo’s arrival triggered Vettel’s exit from Red Bull which culminated in his career going downward spiral first with Ferrari and then with Aston Martin. Similarly, favouritism for Verstappen, who eventually replaced Vettel at Red Bull triggered Ricciardo’s exit from Red Bull and he’s never been the same since. And Ricciardo got his chance at Red Bull because of Webber’s retirement who now manages Piastri. So the circle seems to be complete. Regardless, the winners could be Alonso, and Piastri while Alpine and Ricciardo could end up licking their wounds.