Otmar Szafnauer says departing Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo only spoke with him three times while Szafnauer was running the Alpine Formula 1 team, and the Renault executive wasn't prepared to allow the Alpine F1 project the time it needed to recruit the right people it needed to succeed.
Szafnauer ran Alpine's F1 operation for 17 months from 2022 until midway through 2023, when he was suddenly released along with sporting director Alan Permane during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.
Szafnauer says the final conversation he had with de Meo, the man in ultimate charge of the Alpine F1 project after rebranding the works Renault team in 2021, came at the 2023 Canadian GP.
"I only talked to him twice, three times actually," said Szafnauer, speaking on the latest episode of his new Team Principal Podcast with The Race.
"Once when he was very passionate about recruiting me away from Aston. He said he needed somebody that had a good track record in Formula 1, knew what it took to win, how to put together a high performing team.
"He seemed very passionate about doing well.
"Then another time I talked to him at the Renault headquarters in Paris. A quick half-hour meeting just asking me how it was going. That was towards the end of '22 leading up to '23. I just told him of our plans for '23.
"And then the last time I talked to him was in Montreal in '23, and I explained to him that it takes time to effect cultural change in a team, especially when you want the culture to be one of a high-performing team and pushing all boundaries to improve on-track performance.
"Without worrying about making mistakes, because if you don't make mistakes, you're not working hard enough. You're not pushing the boundaries enough.
"I told him how long it should take, and he said 'I don't have the time. I've got to do it quicker'."
Szafnauer says he was still in the process of recruiting and onboarding key F1 personnel at that point, and reckons the instability created by the revolving door of senior leaders Alpine has been through since then has resulted in many of those signings opting to leave the team.
"Some of these guys ended up at Alpine after I left," Szafnauer added. "They stayed four weeks and then left.
"There's one fellow I recruited from Red Bull, a great aerodynamicist. I think he's the only one that's still there. He came after I left and he is still there today.
"But the rest of my recruits, and there were many, either didn't come at all or a couple of them came - one for four weeks, one for two/three months, and they're gone.
"And they're really good people. One of which, I think he's among the best simulation guys in the world. He went from Red Bull to Apple, because Apple were going to do a road car, and he was leading the simulation at Apple in Cupertino.
"I got him to come back from Apple. He had some considerations where he had to stay in America for over a year and we supported him through that entire process, and he came back for a month at Alpine and left."
This sounds very much like the profile of Giles Wood, who formerly worked closely with Adrian Newey at Red Bull and recently resumed that working relationship after becoming Aston Martin's new simulation and vehicle modelling director.
For the staff remaining at Enstone, Szafnauer says he "feels for them" and hopes stability will soon be re-established within the senior leadership of the team so it can "start rebuilding".
"I'm not pointing out anything the whole world doesn't know," he added. "You just have to look at the constructors' table. They are last in the constructors' championship this year. And it just shows that poor decision making or instability at the top still correlates to not such great performance on track.
"When the senior leadership team changes and it's unstable, then you get people like the best simulation guy in the world leaving, only staying four weeks, or the chief technical officer leaving, or the technical director.
"And there's so many of them that have left. The head of vehicle science that we recruited, he's at Williams now.
"So when you get that churn at the top and the people that actually do the important work and have the knowledge see it as a risky place to work, they then go look elsewhere and start working elsewhere in an environment that's more stable."
Szafnauer described de Meo's impending departure as a "big surprise" given previous reports the Renault Group CEO had recently agreed to what Szafnauer called a "four-year contract extension with Renault" and the "core business" of making and selling road cars was "looking good".
"Whether it has an impact or not on the team, I don't know," Szafnauer added. "Maybe Flavio [Briatore]'s absolutely right. It will have zero impact. But I would imagine that will also be determined by the next CEO or the board.
"I would think if it was in the hands of the group CEO before, and when Carlos Ghosn was there, he was making the Formula 1 decisions, I can see Renault leaving this decision to the next CEO and we don't know who that is."
Szafnauer says Renault now faces a choice of whether to keep the team going as is, rebrand it, or sell it on for a profit.
"Alpine I think in the near future will only have electric cars - so there isn't really a good correlation between the powertrain of the Formula 1 team and the powertrain in Alpine cars," Szafnauer said. "Maybe that doesn't matter.
"It was a great decision a few years back to buy it for next to nothing. And now the valuation is over a billion. It could be 1.2, could be 1.5, in that region. Take your money and invest it in the core business.
"I can see that also being a consideration. Maybe you say, 'you know what? I bought this team for a pittance and now it's worth one, one and a half billion. I'm going to sell.'"
