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Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has revealed his former employers Aston Martin wanted him to remain there, but Martin Whitmarsh’s arrival convinced him to move on.

Szafnauer had been with the Silverstone-based squad since 2009 and stayed throughout the team’s previous guises as Force India and Racing Point.

The team went through a complete rebrand to become Aston Martin under Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll’s ownership in 2021, bringing four-time former World Champion Sebastian Vettel on board.

With fresh investment, the British squad opted to appoint former McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh as Group Chief Executive Officer – a role that oversees the Formula 1 team of the Aston Martin group.

It was a move Szafnauer felt would have reduced his influence on the team and the Romanian-American engineer, being a racer, wanted to have more of an impact. Thus Szafnauer ultimately moved to rival team Alpine following their own management restructure.

“Although they asked me to stay, I didn’t think it was appropriate for someone to come in and do 95% of your job and (I) do 5%,” said the Alpine boss.

“I probably could have stayed where I was, taken the pay cheque to the bank