Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has revealed that he spoke to IndyCar driver Colton Herta, as he tried to get Red Bull to release Pierre Gasly from the Austrian’s family.
As rumours regarding Gasly possibly moving to Alpine began to circulate, Red Bull looked into signing IndyCar star Herta for AlphaTauri, so that they could allow Gasly to leave the family and join Alpine.
Trying to sign Gasly, though, became increasingly difficult for Szafnauer and Alpine, as Herta’s move to AlphaTauri was blocked after the FIA rejected Red Bull’s appeal to let him race in F1 without the sufficient superlicence points.
IndyCar drivers are awarded significantly less superlicence points than they arguably deserve, with drivers being able to claim more racing in FIA junior categories than in the American open-wheel series.
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To try and get hold of Gasly – who’d earlier signed a one-year contract extension with the team – Szafnauer contacted AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost, who gave the Romanian-American a fairly definitive answer.
“I called Franz [Tost] to say can you release him? And Franz said no. And so I said, ‘well, great. I’m glad you said that’,” Szafnauer said according to Motorsport.com.
“Because the last thing I wanted to hear was, yeah, I can’t wait to get rid of this guy! He said, no, I need him, he’s a great driver. I don’t want to lose him.
“I said ‘thank you, with all due respect, do you mind if I call Helmut [Marko]? He might have a different perspective’.”
Calling Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko is exactly what Szafnauer did, in a bid to get the services of Gasly to replace Fernando Alonso.
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Szafnauer also held discussions with Herta himself, as the Alpine boss knew what he had to do in order to get Gasly’s signature.
“I called Helmut. But at the same time, when I got to certain milestones, I would call [Alpine CEO] Laurent [Rossi] and say, look, this is what I’ve done. This is how far I’ve gotten. I now have to go to America and talk to Bryan Herta about a release [for Colton Herta].
“And I did that bit of it too. I went and had lunch with Bryan and Colton. Because the release was conditional upon Red Bull finding a replacement that they were happy with. Otherwise they wouldn’t have released him.”