Alpine has announced the immediate resignation of its team principal, Oliver Oakes.
He had been in the role for little more than nine months, having taken over from his predecessor Bruno Famin at the end of last year.
“BWT Alpine Formula 1 Team announces that Oliver Oakes has resigned from his role as Team Principal,” said a statement issued by Alpine on Tuesday evening.
“The team has accepted his resignation with immediate effect.”
The team said its executive advisor Flavio Briatore “will also be covering the duties previously performed by Oliver Oakes” in addition to his existing role.
“The team would like to thank Oliver for his efforts since he joined last summer and for his contribution in helping the team secure sixth place in the 2024 constructors’ championship,” Alpine added.
“The team will not be making any further comment.”
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Briatore ran the team during its previous incarnations as Benetton in the late eighties and early nineties, and Renault in the noughties. He took them to championship successes with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.
However Briatore left the team in disgrace in 2009 after the FIA ruled he and chief technical officer Pat Symonds were behind the ‘Crashgate’ conspiracy at the previous year’s Singapore Grand Prix. The pair arranged for Nelson Piquet Jnr to crash at a chosen point early in the race in order to help his team mate Alonso to victory.
The FIA banned Briatore from the sport indefinitely, but he successfully overturned the ruling by appealing to the French Tribunal de Grande Instance in 2010.
The news comes as Alpine again finds itself the focus of speculation over its driver line-up. Briatore has long been thought to favour replacing Jack Doohan, who started his seventh grand prix for the team last weekend, with Franco Colapinto.
Last week a sponsor of Colapinto’s indicated he would make his debut for the team at next week’s Emilia-Romanga Grand Prix. Oakes said in Miami on Friday: “As it is today, Jack is our driver along with Pierre [Gasly].”
Oakes joined Alpine having previously run his own single-seater team, Hitech, which competes in Formula 2, Formula 3 and other junior categories. It made an unsuccessful bid to join the Formula 1 grid in 2023, when its application was turned down by the FIA.
By taking over as team principal Briatore becomes the sixth individual to hold the position in five years, following Cyril Abiteboul, Davide Brivio, Otmar Szafnauer, Bruno Famin and Oakes.
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