Alessandro Alunni Bravi has explained the new style of working at Alfa Romeo Sauber with him as a F1 team representative.
With Frederic Vasseur moving to Ferrari, Sauber took in Andreas Seidl as its CEO but he isn’t to be the team principal which the Frenchman was dueling in. Instead, they have decided to promote Bravi as their F1 team representative.
He will represent Alfa Romeo in key F1 related matters which includes the usual role of a team principal who not only works with the team trackside but also with the FIA. But Bravi won’t be alone as he will have key people at his side in different roles.
While Seidl will be more on CEO side for the whole of Sauber Group, the F1 side will continue to have Beat Zehnder as the Sporting Director and Xevi Pujolar as the Head of Track Engineering, with Jan Monchaux heading the Technical matters.
The idea from Seidl rings a similar bell like that at McLaren where he was a team principal but had different people at his side to aide him. Considering that F1 is becoming more complex and with the calendar only expanding, teams need to adapt to these changes.
While Bravi seems like an unknown ‘name’ in the ‘team principal’ world but the Italian has been around F1 paddock for long in his career. He has worked in several categories and in early 2000s, he also worked as the team manager of Trident in GP2 Series.
More recently, he has been the general counsel – due to his lawyer credentials – at ART Grand Prix, Spark Technology and Birel ART. Drawing from his experience at All Road Management, Bravi founded Trusted Talent Management where he looked after Stoffel Vandoorne, Robert Kubica, Gianmaria Bruni and Christian Lundgaard.
Outline the responsibilities and experience of Andreas Seidl –
Bravi: “What we have decided together with Andreas is to change the organisational structure of the team in order to respond to the complexity of the tasks that each team is facing. There is no only one structure that you can have for a Formula One team. So we decided to split the functions in a different person, in a different profiles, on the track and off the track. I will be the team representative meaning I will work with Xevi Pujolar, Head of track engineering, Beat Zehnder the sporting director but we will have different functions from that.
“We represent the team vis a vis of the FIA, Formula One and of course the media and the sponsor. We will work as a team. I think this is important as the structure will help to address better the tasks we have ahead of us. It is simply a different structure that all the teams are developing you know with all their models in order to be more efficient. And efficient is the key word. I think it is not just a matter of being efficient in the work shop as we need to be efficient on the track. We have internal processes that of course have been agreed altogether and I think this will be the difference.”
Doing things that you have not done before and personal experience –
Bravi: “You have always to learn and I approach this with curiosity. It will be a new role for me in addition to my position as Managing Director of Sauber. It is very new I would say. Of course I do not have the experience or competence of other team principals, so far me it will be the first day to start learning but I will have strong support from the team and very competent people and a strong group working around myself. I will be coordinated and guided by our CEO Andreas Seidl, Beat and Xevi who have huge experience and this makes me comfortable although I know we will be facing challenges.
“I will be at the pit wall but also taking part in all the activities with the FIA and Formula One. I will there at the weekend to support the team and drivers. What I said a while ago was the objective and the target was to gain the respect of all the people working together with me at the factory and on track. This is a personal objective I think and I am one of the people working on track, not the most important one. The contribution of each person off and on track is key for any company and I will try to give my best to the success of this team.”
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