Alpine F1 turnaround proves Enstone reorganisation was the “right thing to do”

Alpine Formula 1 team boss Oliver Oakes says the team improving its fortunes over the second half of the 2024 season has shown that streamlining its Enstone operation was the right way to go.

Hitech junior team chief Oakes was brought in alongside advisor Flavio Briatore by Renault boss Luca de Meo to help steady the ship at Alpine after a rocky first half of its 2024 campaign.

As part of De Meo’s plans, the manufacturers decided to wind down its F1 power unit programme that was working on the new 2026 engines, inking a customer deal with Mercedes instead.

But the reorganisation embarked upon by Oakes and Briatore also affected its vehicle headquarters in Enstone, which has been slimmed down from over 1100 employees to around 900.

Explaining the thought process behind it, Oakes says the recent upturn in form under technical director David Sanchez has shown that the reorganisation was the “right thing to do” for the leaner squad.

“At that time it wasn’t just Viry [the team’s power unit headquarters] that was getting a little bit reorganised, we were also doing the same on the site in Enstone,” Oakes told Autosport.

“I think we’ve proven that was the right thing to do and at the end of every team in F1 is always striving to get better, but also to get more efficient.

“In a budget cap world, you’ve got to make sure you’re putting resources in the right area. And I think the mainstay of that topic was that we need to focus on the main thing, which is building a good racing car and going racing. And that’s been a real ethos since I arrived in the team in July there, that everything is about making a better car and going racing.

“I’d say we’re now around 900 [people in Enstone]. Look, I think obviously everyone in F1 talks about headcount. And some people calculate that as whether you’re counting people in cap, out of cap, whether you’re producing your own gearbox and suspension or not. I dare say we’re one of the sort of smaller outfits now, considering we do the whole car.”

Oakes is confident the team has everything it needs to move back to the front of the midfield, although he stopped short of putting a timeframe on it.

“Enstone has been there a long time,” he explained. “The walls have got more history in F1 than most factories, but we’ve got the right amount of resources there. The main resource today is good people and we’ve got a lot of great people there.

“There has been a lot of investment the past few years, which also shows the support and commitment from the group at the end of the day. We’ve got a new simulator, new dyno, all those things that probably haven’t been spoken about, but we have everything we need.

“But we are continuing to invest. That’s one thing that’s amazed me in F1, it’s not just the wish list of what they want on the race car. It’s also all the toys around that. It never stops.”