Zak Brown slammed Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer as looking a little silly in the aftermath of losing the Contracts Recognition Board ruling to McLaren regarding Oscar Piastri.
The Alpine/McLaren/Piastri saga dominated the Formula 1 scene during the summer break, after Fernando Alonso announced his departure from Alpine to Aston Martin for 2023 and beyond replacing the retiring Sebastian Vettel.
The French team then announced Piastri as Alonso’s replacement, the former immediately denying any contract was there with all indications showing he was hired by McLaren.
Alpine’s Szafnauer was adamant they had a valid contract with Piastri, and took matters up in front of the Contracts Recognition Board (CRB) which ended up validating the Australian contract with McLaren for 2023, where he will be replacing compatriot Daniel Ricciardo.
Other than responding Szafnauer’s “lack of integrity” accusations to Piastri, Brown and McLaren remained calm and silent on any contracts talk as this story developed, and simply announced him as a 2023 driver after the CRB issued the ruling.
However, Brown later spoke about the matter, and told NBC Sports: “I think before people saw the CRB ruling, they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and we kept our mouth shut deliberately.
“Now that that ruling’s come out in some good detail, I think it’s clear what happened there,” he added.
“We always felt that… We obviously recognized there was a lot of noise, but we knew the truth would come out eventually and we just needed to kind of ride it out as opposed to giving a running commentary.
“So at the time I was not oblivious to the noise and some of the direct message notes that I got from fans. But now we’re very comfortable that the CRBs come out, that that’s very clear there,” he explained.
Better to keep your mouth shut in such situations
Szafnauer kept talking up Alpine’s chances but ended up losing out, on which Brown commented: “If you look at all of Otmar’s comments, he was giving the play-by-play on the CRB on how confident they were.
“And now I think he looks a little silly,” he hit out. “So that’s why it’s best to keep your mouth shut, and then you can talk about it after the fact when there’s something concrete to say.”
Piastri remains under contract as Alpine’s reserve for 2022, and when asked of McLaren would like to run their new driver in some practice sessions this season, Brown said: “Ultimately Andreas (Seidl) will make that decision.
“We don’t have total clarity yet because Oscar’s still under contract for ’22. We’re still developing the car, so we’re unlikely to want to put a rookie in when we’re still throwing bits on the car.
“So obviously it would be the later half of the year, because only six races left, we’re undecided on whether it’s one driver, two drivers and which one or ones.
“I think we will know that in a couple weeks,” the McLaren CEO pointed out.
Nothing has yet been confirmed by Alpine whether they will be releasing Piastri early from his current reserve role.