Alpine: Team principal Oliver Oakes leaves F1 team with immediate effect

Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes has left the team less than a year after being appointed to the role.

A statement by Alpine on Tuesday said Oakes had resigned and that the team had “accepted his resignation with immediate effect”.

The team said Flavio Briatore would continue in his role as executive adviser and would now also cover the duties Oakes had performed.

No explanation was given for Oakes’ departure. The team said no further comment would be made and Oakes declined to comment when contacted.

A source told BBC Sport that it was Oakes’ decision to leave. Others said that it came as a surprise inside the team.

Oakes, who moved to Alpine from his Hitech team that competes in the junior categories, was widely considered within F1 to have little power at the team, with former Renault team boss Briatore the real controlling force.

Briatore’s controversial return to F1 as a team leader 15 years after he was found guilty of fixing the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix as Renault team boss was orchestrated by Renault Group chief executive officer Luca de Meo in July last year.

Oakes’ departure comes just a day after it emerged that Alpine were poised to drop Australian Jack Doohan after just six races this season and replace him with Argentine former Williams driver Franco Colapinto.

Oakes was appointed in July last year after Alpine, who are owned by Renault, removed their previous team principal Bruno Famin and placed him elsewhere in the company.

And it continues a turbulent few years at the team that have seen a continuous flux in senior management amid a run of disappointing results for Renault’s factory team.

Renault also decided last year to end their F1 engine programme, which had been involved since 1977 with only a couple of brief breaks. Alpine will use Mercedes engines next season.

Famin also lasted less than a year in his role as team boss after replacing Otmar Szafnauer in July 2023. The American lasted just 17 months.

Shortly before Szafnauer’s departure, Alpine chief executive officer Laurent Rossi was also dismissed. He had been with the company for just two and a half years.

Alpine finished sixth in the constructors’ championship last year and are ninth with a quarter of this season gone.

Their best result this year is a seventh place for Pierre Gasly in Bahrain, where the Frenchman qualified fifth but started fourth as a result of a penalty for Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.