Quote:
Originally Posted by darcym
I saw the peter windsor video, and thought the concept of a 'handshake' as a multi-million pound agreement a bit naive.
But there are some common good business principals that apply to all business including F1.
Oscar knew what Alpine had invested in him in terms of time/money/resource, so contract or not, good business practice would be to talk to the team to say 'I'm not happy with the Williams deal, Mclaren look like a better offer, I'd like to go for it'
Alpine knew they had a junior eager driver, that from his point of view they thought he was going to Williams, the Alonso situation changed, which changed the position of Oscar for Alpine, before issuing a press release, perhaps talk to your team member, find out his thoughts, get a common view point and message before issuing a press release blindly - it's just immature from Alpine
Alonso was in the middle of negotiations, if one of you wants to end negotiations you say 'it's over' - Alpine clearly thought they where still haggling
easy to say all this with zero fact and just gossip but it feels there is a huge lack of professionalism on all sides going on with what should be a a well practiced operation
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As you say, all the above is easy to say without knowing what the terms of the contract actually were.
I would imagine that the contract with Piastri was more favourable in it's terms to Alpine - as you say, they had invested heavily in the young man - so it is possible that as the team had not exercised their option at the 11th hour, Piastri must have felt that he wasn't valued and he may have lost the opportunity to go to McLaren if he had spoken to the team prior to the expiry of Alpine's option clause.
In my opinion, for what little it's worth, Alpine cocked up big time and it would seem as though the Recognition Panel also thought so to as they ruled in favour of the driver.