Alpine 'treasure' Oscar Piastri lessons as French team cover loopholes that allowed McLaren to sign Aussie driver

Alpine have learned their lessons from the Oscar Piastri saga that ended with their prized junior driver jumping ship to rival McLaren, believes team principal Otmar Szafnauer.

The Piastri drama lit up the F1 newsrooms for a few weeks during the 2022 season. It all started with Sebastian Vettel announcing his retirement, which led to Fernando Alonso ditching Alpine for the vacant seat at Aston Martin.

A day after the Spaniard announced his move, Alpine released a statement saying that reserve driver Piastri would be racing for the team in 2023. Even before the word could spread, the Australian driver took to social media to state that the team made the announcement without his consent. He added that he would not be driving for the team in 2023.

A few weeks later, McLaren parted ways with Daniel Ricciardo and announced his young compatriot as his replacement. Alpine, however, refused to accept McLaren's claims and were up for a fight, which saw the Contract Recognition Board jump into action to find clarity.

The CRB ruled on September 2 that Piastri's contract with McLaren was valid and that he would be driving for the Woking-based side in 2023. In a statement, they said:

“The only contract to be recognized by the Board is the contract between McLaren Racing Limited and Mr. Piastri dated 4 July 2022. Mr. Piastri is entitled to drive for McLaren Racing Limited for the 2023 and 2024 seasons.”

Touching on this 'ordeal' in an interaction with the press, Szafnauer stated that Alpine have learned their lessons from the Piastri saga and will close all 'loopholes' that were exploited by the 21-year-old. He said (via Total Motorsport):

“Species that cooperate survive. Species that are selfish become extinct. In the future, we will treasure these lessons and make sure that we eliminate the loopholes that allowed Oscar to get out of the contract we thought we had with him.”

The 58-year-old Romanian-American added:

“What happened in the summer was not what we had planned in December 2021. We can say that we should have done things differently so that the plan to promote Oscar would actually have been realized.”

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Alpine hope Pierre Gasly can help bridge the gap between them and the frontrunners of F1

Alpine moved quickly to replace Fernando Alonso and his momentary replacement Oscar Piastri with Pierre Gasly. The Frenchman joined the team at the end of the 2022 season and will partner compatriot Esteban Ocon in 2023 and 2024.

The team's CEO Laurent Rossi has high hopes for Gasly, who he believes can be the 'technical leader' of the team and help them bridge the gap to the frontrunners of the F1 grid. He said:

“Hopefully, he’s going to bring what we need, which is to continue developing the car, because at the moment, we are still pretty much in the midfield and we need to take the car a notch up.”

He added:

“So that's what Pierre, we hope, is going to bring. I mean, he was the technical leader in many ways, I guess, at AlphaTauri. We want him to continue doing that, grow the team, grow himself with us and take us to a new level.”