Alpine CEO's outburst against team was misguided - "Not the first questionable decision Rossi has made"

F1 pundit Scott Mitchell-Malm has said that Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi's explosive statements about the performance of his team ahead of the Miami GP last Sunday were misguided.

The Frenchman did not mince words and hold back criticism when reviewing the start of the season for Alpine. The Endstone-based team are tied with McLaren on 14 points in P6 despite having a better car than the latter. They have had many technical and driver issues in the first five races, leaving Rossi unhappy.

However, appearing on The Race podcast, Mitchell-Malm said:

"Yeah, the very surprising machine gun round that CEO Laurent Rossi fired into his team over the course of a weekend in an interview. I always find it interesting when senior team figures fields and need to say that kind of thing in their own way; it's not hidden; it's on national television.

"It just feels like he thought he wanted to get his message out there, but he wanted to do it on his terms, a bit weird. Not the first questionable decision Rossi has made as CEO. But I think it was a weekend that they need it as a race team to have low fuss and score points after Baku."

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“He is responsible for the performance of the team; that’s his job" - Alpine CEO

Laurent Rossi has said that the blame has to fall on the shoulders of Alpine principal Otmar Szafnauer for not taking the team forward in terms of performance.

As per F1.com, the Alpine CEO said:

“He is responsible for the performance of the team – that’s his job. There is no hiding here. Otmar was brought in to steer the team, through the season and the next seasons towards the objectives that we have, which is to constantly make progress, as we did in the first two years – fifth and fourth – and to get to the podiums, and therefore, this is his mission to turn this team around and bring it to the performance that we want."

He continued:

“We had a team that performed reasonably well last year and got the fourth position, which is the best improvement we had in a long time. It showed a lot of promise. It’s more or less the same people, so I don’t accept that we are not capable of maintaining that. Yes, it is Otmar and the rest of his team, as Otmar alone doesn’t do everything, but the buck stops with Otmar. It’s Otmar’s responsibility, yes.”

It will be fascinating to see if Otmar Szafnauer responds to Rossi's comments.