Latest news with #OliverOakes
Times
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- Times
Inside story of the soap opera at F1's most turbulent team
Alpine are used to turbulent times, having had a revolving door of team principals in recent years, but arriving at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix technically without one at all is out of the ordinary, even within that context. Since the Miami Grand Prix, when Oliver Oakes left the paddock without performing media duties, the principal has departed the team, Franco Colapinto has replaced Jack Doohan in their driver line-up and the 75-year old Flavio Briatore has taken over from Oakes but does not have the licence required to officially step into the team principal role. Briatore's past is more chequered than the flag waved at the end of Formula 1 races and in Imola he begins his latest chapter 'otherwise covering the duties previously
Scottish Sun
17-05-2025
- Automotive
- Scottish Sun
Former F1 team boss makes secret return to Imola GP paddock just days after resigning following brother's arrest
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) FORMER Alpine boss Oliver Oakes has made a shock return to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix paddock days after handing in his resignation. The Brit, 37, quit his team principal role this month after his brother, a fellow motorsport director, was arrested and charged with 'transferring criminal property'. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 Oliver Oakes was spotted in the Emilia Romagna GP paddock only days after his resignation Credit: Getty Oakes was spotted behind-the-scenes in the Formula 2 and Formula 3 paddocks in Imola, where he will continue to serve as a director of junior team Hitech GP. His younger brother William, a fellow boss at Hitech, was arrested at Silverstone Park on May 1 after he was found 'in possession of a large amount of cash.' Oakes resigned from Alpine two days after the Miami Grand Prix and flew straight to Dubai, rather than travelling with the team back to England. It's been a hectic month for Alpine, with driver Jack Doohan dropped for Franco Colapinto, who crashed in the first practice session on Friday. Racing director Dave Greenwood has assumed team principal duties, but consultant Flavio Briatore is the de facto boss because he doesn't hold a required F1 licence. Meanwhile, a third director, Michael William Charles Sanwell-Lewis, has been appointed to the Hitech GP board. While some were surprised to spot Oakes, who only took charge of Alpine in July 2024, he remains committed to Hitech, the team formerly led by Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin. Formula 2 and Formula 3 are only invited to support a few F1 weekends a year, so the timing for Oakes is unfortunate. Start of F1 races will look very different in 2025 with major change for first time in over a decade William of Rugby, Warwickshire, was remanded in custody after appearing at Northampton Magistrates' Court on May 3. SunSport has reached out to Hitech for comment.
The Irish Sun
17-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Irish Sun
Former F1 team boss makes secret return to Imola GP paddock just days after resigning following brother's arrest
FORMER Alpine boss Oliver Oakes has made a shock return to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix paddock days after handing in his resignation. The Brit, 37, 1 Oliver Oakes was spotted in the Emilia Romagna GP paddock only days after his resignation Credit: Getty Oakes was spotted behind-the-scenes in the His younger brother William, a fellow boss at Hitech, was arrested at Silverstone Park on May 1 after he was found 'in possession of a large amount of cash.' Oakes resigned from Alpine two days after the It's been a hectic month for Alpine, with driver READ MORE IN F1 Racing director Dave Greenwood has assumed team principal duties, but consultant Meanwhile, a third director, Michael William Charles Sanwell-Lewis, has been appointed to the Hitech GP board. While some were surprised to spot Oakes, who only took charge of Alpine in July 2024, he remains committed to Hitech, the team formerly led by Russian oligarch Formula 2 and Formula 3 are only invited to support a few F1 weekends a year, so the timing for Oakes is unfortunate. Most read in Motorsport Start of F1 races will look very different in 2025 with major change for first time in over a decade William of Rugby, Warwickshire, was remanded in custody after appearing at Northampton Magistrates' Court on May 3. SunSport has reached out to Hitech for comment.
The Sun
17-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Sun
Former F1 team boss makes secret return to Imola GP paddock just days after resigning following brother's arrest
FORMER Alpine boss Oliver Oakes has made a shock return to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix paddock days after handing in his resignation. The Brit, 37, quit his team principal role this month after his brother, a fellow motorsport director, was arrested and charged with 'transferring criminal property'. Oakes was spotted behind-the-scenes in the Formula 2 and Formula 3 paddocks in Imola, where he will continue to serve as a director of junior team Hitech GP. His younger brother William, a fellow boss at Hitech, was arrested at Silverstone Park on May 1 after he was found 'in possession of a large amount of cash.' Oakes resigned from Alpine two days after the Miami Grand Prix and flew straight to Dubai, rather than travelling with the team back to England. It's been a hectic month for Alpine, with driver Jack Doohan dropped for Franco Colapinto, who crashed in the first practice session on Friday. Racing director Dave Greenwood has assumed team principal duties, but consultant Flavio Briatore is the de facto boss because he doesn't hold a required F1 licence. Meanwhile, a third director, Michael William Charles Sanwell-Lewis, has been appointed to the Hitech GP board. While some were surprised to spot Oakes, who only took charge of Alpine in July 2024, he remains committed to Hitech, the team formerly led by Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin. Formula 2 and Formula 3 are only invited to support a few F1 weekends a year, so the timing for Oakes is unfortunate. Start of F1 races will look very different in 2025 with major change for first time in over a decade William of Rugby, Warwickshire, was remanded in custody after appearing at Northampton Magistrates' Court on May 3.
New York Times
16-05-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
Team principal quits and a harsh driver change, is there really ‘no trouble' at Alpine?
IMOLA, Italy — Even by the standards of a team that has regularly been in transition through recent Formula One history, Alpine's past two weeks have been particularly turbulent. Within three days of the checkered flag dropping on the 2025 season's sixth grand prix, Miami, Alpine made a long-anticipated change to its line-up – swapping Jack Doohan for reserve driver Franco Colapinto, and, more shockingly, saw team principal Oliver Oakes resign for personal reasons. It later emerged that Oakes' brother, William, who is a director of the Hitech junior team alongside his sibling, had been arrested in the UK a few days earlier. Oliver Oakes is not accused of any wrongdoing. Advertisement Following Oakes' departure, after just an eight-month tenure, Alpine stated that further team principal duties would fall under the remit of Flavio Briatore, Alpine's executive advisor who returned to the frequently-renamed team last year. Briatore was in charge when the team won F1 world championships as Benetton in the 1990s and as Renault in the mid-2000s. In his remit for this third stint, he reports to Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo. The aim is to revive the team's fortunes after years mired in F1's congested midfield. Briatore's return proved controversial given his history in F1, including the short-lived 'lifetime' ban from the sport he received in 2009 over a cheating scandal, but he quickly made some big calls upon joining the Alpine staff cause last year. These included the decision to end the Renault F1 engine program in favor of the team becoming a Mercedes customer from 2026, as well as dropping Esteban Ocon for the final race of last season to give Doohan an early debut. Briatore was also instrumental in Colapinto's signing, initially as reserve driver, after he'd become a star in his native Argentina during a nine-race F1 stint for Williams in 2024. Colapinto brought with him a sizable commercial pull. The past couple of weeks have hardly instilled the image of a team moving in a stable, consistent direction, especially with Oakes being the latest in a long line of senior leaders to depart after a short stint — Pierre Gasly is already working under his fourth team principal since signing up to race for Alpine from 2023. Except there technically is no team principal right now. While Briatore is 'fully in charge', according to an Alpine spokesperson, because he is a consultant and so not an employee, he is not eligible to be listed as the designated team principal for the FIA's administrative purposes. While it is a bureaucratic quirk, all teams are required to submit a list of senior personnel to F1's governing body for each race. Advertisement In the absence of a 'team principal', Alpine's assigned representative for this weekend's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix here is Dave Greenwood, its racing director. It's not unheard of: for two years after Fred Vasseur left in 2022 to run Ferrari, Sauber had Alessandro Alunni Bravi (now working for McLaren) as its team representative while first Andreas Seidl and then Mattia Binotto worked above him without the team principal moniker or responsibilities. Gasly knocked back suggestions of internal chaos at Alpine when speaking to reporters at Imola on Thursday. 'There will be some stability, with the guys that work in the office, with my engineers working back at the factory in the simulator,' he said. 'It's not all down to one person that will unsettle our whole foundation.' It's a view shared by Alpine insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity, who claimed that although the departure of Oakes was sudden, there is confidence in the pre-existing structure. After all, Briatore already held considerable power, overseeing the team's operations, and there is a strong base in place between Greenwood, technical director David Sanchez and sporting and strategy director Richard Lockwood. Oakes' exit is a loss but it is deemed to be manageable. That is also why Alpine is not rushing to appoint a new team principal to fill his shoes. Had Briatore not already been in place and wielding such a pull at the team, working to try to get it back to where it once was in previous decades, there would be a greater need to get in fresh leadership. Instead, the team is viewing this as a chance to take time to find the right person to fill the role, with a view to the next hire lasting longer than the recent runs of their predecessors as team principal. Gasly said he thought the headlines around Alpine were not reflecting the work he was seeing back at its factory near Oxford, England, having spent some time there last week before going to Scotland to play golf for four days. He recognized 'the noise outside is always going to be there' when major changes occur, before saying it was 'important we move on from this… 'special week', let's say, and focus on business as usual.' Advertisement Gasly insisted its 'special week' had not destabilized Alpine. 'There is no trouble within the team,' he said. 'There is no disagreement within anyone. The vision and direction remain the same as it was before Miami and after Miami. 'In terms of directions and pure work, this hasn't changed.' That work needs to lift Alpine from its current struggle for form on track. Alpine sits ninth in the 10-team constructors' table after six races, with just two points finishes. The hope is that Colapinto, who conducted private testing for the team before he makes his official Alpine debut this weekend, can provide a lift in form compared to where Doohan started the season. Although the Australian did appear to be making progress, a couple of incidents — notably his enormous crash in practice for last month's Japanese Grand Prix — eased the decision-making over the change, given the commercial appeal of running Colapinto. Doohan had been subject to questions about Colapinto's presence from the moment he first spoke publicly after Alpine signed the South American in early January and always seemed under pressure. The call to drop him this early was nevertheless harsh — a feeling shared by F1 driver peers, including Alex Albon of Williams and Ollie Bearman. They expressed sympathy for the Australian in their media calls in Imola on Thursday. Ex-Alpine driver Ocon, who now races for Haas alongside Bearman and was jettisoned for Doohan before that 2024 finale in Abu Dhabi, which allowed him to make an early switch to the American team in the post-season test at that same track, said in a news conference on Thursday he felt 'not really any surprise from some of the decisions that have been taken recently by the team.' He didn't want to go into further detail, simply saying: 'I'm happy where I am.' Advertisement But in a later interview with French TV station Canal+, Ocon said such calls 'ruin a driver's career when you do something like that — though his career is far from over. I believe he'll be back in F1 one day, he's got potential. But people don't realise drivers work their whole lives to get to that moment, and giving us five races like that, that's not normal.' During Thursday's pre-race news conference, Colapinto said he felt 'much more relaxed' now than following his mid-season promotion at Williams last year. He highlighted his strong form in previous single-seater categories here at Imola (his sprint-race victory in Formula Two at the Italian track last year kick-started his season and contributed to his eventual F1 graduation) but was also asked about the five-race window that Alpine specified as an 'evaluation' period for its driver line-up when announcing Colapinto's promotion, which will run up to the Austrian Grand Prix on June 27. 'As a driver, I'm just trying to go step by step,' Colapinto said. 'I don't really know the car, so (it's) a lot of new things coming and I just want to do the basics right and then the results are going to come.' He was reluctant to set any firm expectations, saying, 'That's the main goal — to try and improve the performance and then, of course, after these five races, we'll see.' But the truth is that, after making such a major change in its driver line-up, Alpine will be evaluating Colapinto's performance constantly, not just after these next five races. Briatore has already proven he is willing to make bold decisions if necessary, and he will get a fuller reading on Colapinto much sooner than Austria. If the 21-year-old immediately starts delivering points-scoring performances and outpacing Gasly, it's unlikely there will be any finite review period or questions to answer at that arbitrary five-race point. His status would surely be secure. Advertisement Equally, if Colapinto struggles, then Doohan — who is still the primary reserve driver at Alpine and will be at Imola from Saturday onwards after completing simulator work on Friday — or even Paul Aron, another academy grad who also raced for Oakes' Hitech team in F2, will be ready and waiting to step in at any point. But the pursuit to secure Colapinto's services from Williams on a multi-year deal, even if there are provisions for his previous time to re-acquire him, suggests confidence that he will deliver. Alpine has so frequently been in flux of late that Oakes' departure and Colapinto's promotion only tie into a well-established narrative. But the feeling within the team is that Briatore's presence remains the most critical element to shaping and influencing its next chapter. Now, it'll be about delivering on the promise that Gasly claims to see, if only to show the outside world the same confidence and certainty that is being preached from within. '(The) directions are very clear,' Gasly said. 'We'll see some rewards and dividends in the next few weeks and months. And I'm very hopeful for next season.'
