"He's shifting the responsibility" - Alpine CEO's comments dissected by F1 pundit

F1 pundit Valentin Khorounzhiy feels that Alpine's CEO Laurent Rossi unnecessarily puts the blame on others working in the French team rather than taking some of it on himself for this year's poor performance.

Alpine is simply unable to perform well and lead the midfield in F1, let alone catch the top teams. Hence, Rossi has been making a lot of statements that show that there is a slight lack of unity in the team.

Speaking on The Race F1 podcast, Khorounzhiy was simply unable to understand why the French team's CEO made a massive public statement and even sat down for an interview with F1, criticizing the team.

The F1 pundit explained how it was Rossi who took some of the credit when the team did great in 2022:

"I don't really see the [need for] doing a massive public blast on television and then doubling down in a separate and more coordinated interview with Formula 1 itself really achieves beyond shifting the blame away from Rossi as Alpine CEO, who took a lot of the credit last year. Saying how good a job Otmar was doing and the fact that the team finished fourth in the championship. He was happy to claim the credit for that."

However, with Alpine currently struggling to stay ahead of every other midfield team, Khorounzhiy stated how Rossi is shifting all the blame and responsibility to the team's factory. Though the factory itself claimed that they have strong unity, the blame from its CEO completely contradicts it.

Khorounzhiy added:

"But now he is shifting the responsibilities of the bad times and fixing the bad times onto the Enstone side. At a time when Enstone tried to preach a lot of unity and saying they are working a lot better as a works team in terms of the actual design and development of the car and the package with the engine.

"To then have an attack from the CEO, who is a part-timer technically in the F1 operation he just comes and goes as he pleases, that does not scream unity to me."

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Alpine CEO on his team's poor performance in the 2023 F1 season

Speaking to Canal+, Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi addressed his team's horrendous start to the 2023 F1 season. The French team was planning to push forward after finishing fourth in the 2022 F1 season. Unfortunately, that did not go as planned.

Rossi said:

"It is disappointing, it is really bad, this year has started with a defective performance, it is a lot, and it is evident. Our position in the classification is not worthy of the resources that we spend, and we are quite far, far away from the final goal of this season. I am noticing, not only an evident lack of performance and rigor at work, but also a potential state of mind that is not up to the past standards of this team."

Rossi criticized the team, mentioning how there is a lack of performance and rigor at work.