And there is even talk that the French team will ask for a millionaire compensation.
The Alpine team announced last week that Australian driver Oscar Piastri would replace Fernando Alonso, but within minutes Piastri flatly denied it and said he would not race for the French team in 2023.
This has angered the great bosses of the Alpine team, who have invested a lot of money in the sports career of the young promise of 21 years, and now they see that they can lose it when they considered that they could count on his services… In addition, they claim to have a signed and valid contract for the next season.
“I am 90% sure that we will go to the High Court,” Otmar Szafnauer, head of the Alpine team, told the Reuters agency. The team has already contacted the Formula 1 Contract Recognition Board (CRB) and, if it says that the contract with Alpine is valid, Piastri will not be able to go to another team.
“If he says that his license is only valid in Alpine and Piastri says ‘okay, but I will not race with them, I will be on the bench for a year’, then we will go to the High Court to obtain compensation,” said the manager, who has already pointed out in other interviews that his team has invested a lot of money in the training of Piastri, champion of Formula Renault, Formula 3 and Formula 2.
Alpine is willing to do calculations on all the money they have invested in Piastri’s racing career since the year he entered their Drivers’ Academy, 2020, and this could include anything from contracts with lower-tier teams to testing with racing cars. Formula 1 you have done.
“We haven’t sat down with the accountants to figure out what we’ve spent, but we will have to if we go to the Supreme Court,” Szafnauer said.
Apparently, Alpine wants to enforce an agreement signed at the end of last year in which it was established that Piastri should debut in Formula 1 in 2023, either with the same French team or with another to which he was transferred, such as Williams, with whom there had already been talks.
“We have a contract with Piastri, which he signed in November, we have spoken with our lawyers and they have told us that this is a binding contract, so part of that contract allows us to put Oscar in one of our cars in 2023, which is not it is more than the reason why we issued the press release,” Szafnauer told El Confidencial.
However, finding himself without a seat, Piastri and his manager, Mark Webber, moved quickly through the paddock to reach a better deal with McLaren for next season, without validating the agreement that Alpine says exists between the two parties. .
The signing of Alonso by Aston Martin, leaving the seat in Alpine free, has anticipated a break between Alpine and Piastri that was going to end up happening, since the rumors suggest that Piastri signed with McLaren during the weekend of the Hungarian GP . The ‘timing’ of the Asturian’s departure could not have been better for the interests of the young Australian…
