After a month of public recrimination and private legal wrangling, Oscar Piastri’s future will take one step closer to being decided today.
On Monday the FIA’s contract recognition board will meet to settle whether Alpine or McLaren had first dibs on the rising Aussie star for 2023. In doing so it’ll play a major part in progressing the 2023 driver market.
Piastri has been at the centre of one of Formula 1’s silliest silly seasons in recent memory.
To briefly recap: Oscar Piastri and his Mark Webber-led management team negotiated themselves into McLaren’s orbit when it became apparently clear that Alpine would retain Fernando Alonso for 2023 and loan the young Aussie to Williams indefinitely.
However, when Alonso suddenly switched to Aston Martin, Alpine reached for Piastri to promote him, only to find his management team unresponsive bar a curt tweet from the young Aussie denying he had any contractual obligation to the team that brought him through the junior categories.
McLaren subsequently reached a settlement to sack Daniel Ricciardo and make way for his compatriot, but Alpine remains adamant it had first call on his services.
It’s infuriated the French team, which feels hard done by after spending millions of dollars and countless of man-hours on Piastri’s development, and team boss Otmar Szafnauer hasn’t been afraid to make his feelings known.
“I expected more loyalty from Oscar than he is showing,” the Alpine team principal told Spanish publication El Confidencial at the start of the month. “It’s not about Formula 1, it’s about integrity as a human being.”
He unleashed a second time at the weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, where he told Sky Sports he wished Piastri “had a bit more integrity”.
“I just wish Oscar would have remembered what he signed in November, what he signed up to,” he said.
But integrity and loyalty aren’t enough to enforce a contract.
WHAT IS THE CONTRACT RECOGNITION BOARD?
The little-known body that will decide the next phase of Piastri’s career is an organ of the FIA set up to arbitrate contract disputes in Formula 1.
It was invented in the aftermath of Michael Schumacher’s 1991 defection to Benetton after making his debut with Jordan at the Belgian Grand Prix.
The star German was able to wriggle from Jordan’s grasp due to the wording in his contract — it famously referred to signing “a contract” rather than “the contract” — but Benetton already had Roberto Moreno signed up in its second seat.
Moreno sought an injunction against his team to prevent Schumacher from usurping him but eventually settled for a payout.
The legal wrangling convinced the FIA to set up the contract recognition board to avoid such ugly encounters in the future.
Teams lodge all driver contracts with the board as a matter of course — a driver’s superlicence isn’t considered valid if the CRB doesn’t have their contract lodged — which theoretically means any conflicts of interest should be immediately flagged.
All teams agree to abide by the rulings of the CRB, thereby forgoing legal recourse in the case of dissenting opinions.
It’s seldom been called into action, but it perhaps most notably had to step in in 2005 when Jenson Button signed for Williams only to have his then current BAR team exercise its option on him for the same season.
The CRB ruled in favour of BAR, and Button was forced to stay.
Earlier, in 1994, David Coulthard had his attempted move from Williams to McLaren cancelled by the CRB, which forced him to stay at Grove for 1995.
The board’s findings are likely to be made publicly known in the middle of the week.
ALPINE OUTLINES ITS ARGUMENT
There’s been much speculation about just how Alpine managed to go from having too many drivers to too few in less than 48 hours, never mind that the two drivers it lost hold of were its two stars.
Reports have ranged from Alpine missing various contractual deadlines to the team simply not bothering to have contracted the Aussie on the assumption there was nowhere for him to go.
But speaking to the media at the Belgian Grand Prix, Szafnauer denied that his team had been negligent in its handling of Piastri’s employment.
“I rarely like to talk about details of driver contracts, but two things I can say: one, there was no ‘by the 31st of July you have to do some things or therefore you can get out’. There’s none of that,” he said.
“That 31st of July deadline that I read all the time is fictitious. It’s not in the contract that he signed.
“The term of the contract is through 2024 with an option at the end of 23.
“Back in November both sides agreed on a way forward all the way up until 24 but, like I said, on the team side to take up an option and 23.
“We definitely held up our end of the bargain.”
Asked if he was confident his understanding of Piastri’s contractual situation would survive Monday’s hearing, Szafnauer was unequivocal.
“Very [confident],” he said. “I’ve seen both sides of the argument and we’re confident that Oscar signed with us back in November.
“There are certain things that need to be in the contract and I’m confident they’re in there.”
McLAREN KEEPS ITS HEAD DOWN
McLaren has been careful not to tempt fate by speaking publicly about the spat, so much so that it’s refused to even confirm it’s communicated with the Piastri camp, never mind open up on the contract it’s taken to the CRB for arbitration.
“Unfortunately I don’t want to touch on any names or scenarios, because it just creates headlines, and we made a conscious decision to go with Daniel also out of respect for Daniel, team boss Andrea Seidl said.
“Regarding the future, that’s something we will put our attention to from next week onwards.”
McLaren appears to have learnt from its travails in IndyCar, where it’s embroiled in a very similar stoush with Chip Ganassi Racing over the services of reigning champion Alex Palou.
On 12 July CGR issued a press statement confirming Palou would continue with the team in 2023 after exercising a deal to extend his contract.
However, shortly afterwards Palou tweeted that he hadn’t agreed to any contract extension and accused the team of fabricating comments attributed to him in the press statement.
Later that day McLaren issued its own press statement announcing Palou would switch IndyCar teams for 2023 in a deal that included an F1 evaluation program similar to that enjoyed by Colton Herta and Pato O’Ward.
Later that month CGR confirmed it was suing its driver for alleged breach of contract.
By refusing to engage in debate, McLaren is at least keeping its hands relatively clean in the messy situation as well as potentially avoiding incriminating itself against whatever terms may still be in force in Piastri’s Alpine contract.
It also means, in its worst-case scenario that Piastri can’t race for it in 2023, McLaren can hire someone else without having to look like it’s backing away from the deal.
CONTRACTS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Regardless of the CRB outcome, Alpine’s contract management is the subject of major questioning.
It stands accused of badly misreading the driver market and Fernando Alonso, leading to the Spaniard’s sudden switch to Aston Martin, while at the same time dropping the ball on the young driver it’s said repeatedly is the team’s future.
Christian Horner expressed the surprise of the paddock over the situation speaking to Sky Sports.
“I don’t fully understand it, because contractually that should just never happen,” he said.
“I think if Renault and Alpine have invested into his junior career, it’s because you invest in youth because you’re investing in it for the future, and there has to be an element of loyalty within that.
“I don’t understand obviously contractually what’s going on there, but for him to be even in a position to think that he doesn’t have to drive for Alpine next year obviously shows there’s something not right.”
Alpine has been rebutted that it’s done nothing wrong. It insists that it holds no grudge against Alonso for leaving given he was a free agent, and it seems to be suggesting Piastri is simply in a clear breach of his contract as well as acting disloyally.
That said, Szafnauer said he would remain open to whatever ruling the contract recognition board made about the way his team has handled its contracts.
“I‘m sure in any situation there lessons learnt, regrets,” he admitted. “We should look back two years from now and see exactly what’s transpired.
“There are lessons to be learnt for sure, so we’ll have a good backwards look, and like anything, we’ll analyse, and if there are a few things we can do better, I’m sure we’ll incorporate those in our future dealings.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
There are two possible rulings the CRB could make on Monday — in favour of Alpine or McLaren — but really only one likely outcome: that Piastri doesn’t drive for Alpine.
It’s difficult to imagine the Australian driving for the French team in 2023 after the public exchanges of the last three weeks.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, when asked about the state of the silly season, said that while the legal circumstances of the move are unclear, Piastri’s side of the relationship carried blame for inflaming the situation.
“I think it‘s important that junior programs are being respected,” he said. “I think some of the kids should be wary on Twitter what they said about multinational organisations. But I have no insight into the contracts.
“I believe in karma, I believe in integrity. But I‘m not here to judge because as I said, I don’t know the legal situation.”
And yet Szafnauer, when asked whether Piastri was a realistic chance to suit up in blue next year, tried to suggest the door would be open to the Australian.
“On the Oscar side, the only disappointing thing really is that he signed something with us in November,” he said. “We delivered everything that we were meant to — in addition to that actually; over-delivered — and his promise to us was to race with us if we put him in our car, so that’s what we’re pursuing.
“This has happened in the past,” he added, referring to Button’s aborted move to Williams. “BAR Honda won at the CRB and then had a great relationship with Jenson culminating in a world championship.”
But instead it seems more likely that Alpine, if it were found to be in the right, would pursue compensation from McLaren to release Piastri, ending the soured relationship in a way that at least saves the team some face.
That in turn would open up the driver market further, with plenty of speculation about which direction Alpine would take.
“I think the chronology is going to be we’re going to go to the CRB on Monday,” Szafnauer said. “I don’t know when they’ll rule, it will be soon thereafter, and then once we have all the information in front of us we’ll start looking at who will fill the open seat.”
The CRB’s ruling will be final, but it certainly won’t put a stop to this silliest of silly seasons.
