(Motorsport-Total.com) – The former team principal of Force India, Aston Martin, and Alpine, Otmar Szafnauer, could imagine a return to Formula 1. However, he does not expect to work again in the role of team principal, also because the scope of the role has changed significantly in recent years.
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“What I miss is this competitive character of Formula 1,” says Szafnauer in the podcast High Performance Racing. “What I don’t miss is the traveling and some other things.”
As long as he can be of use to a team to improve or build it, he could imagine a new job in the top class. “However, it must be at the right level and I have to bring real added value,” emphasizes Szafnauer.
What sounds at first like the team principal position is not necessarily so, according to the native Romanian, “because I’ve been there,” he says. “And nowadays it seems that team principals are rather former race engineers.”
Whether James Vowles at Williams, Andrea Stella at McLaren, or Laurent Mekies at Red Bull: Many team principals in Formula 1 nowadays have a technical background and are no longer the classic managers like Szafnauer, who holds a master’s degree in business and finance.
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However, he is not necessarily a fan of that: “With all due respect: Some of these race engineers – not all – in my opinion have different skills than those needed for a successful team principal.”
Szafnauer worked for twelve years as team principal of Force India and its successors Racing Point and Aston Martin before leaving the team in January 2022 – three months after the arrival of Martin Whitmarsh.
“I was CEO and team principal. He came on board as group CEO,” he recalls. “And within a few weeks, he took over most of my tasks, about 80 percent of them. He said: ‘You can do this 20 percent stuff at the racetrack’ – and I thought: You can’t have two popes.”
Szafnauer moved to Alpine, where he was dismissed as team principal during the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix. Since then, the 62-year-old has been part of a podcast team and CEO of Formula 2 racing team Van Amersfoort.
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