The new face running the Alfa F1 team

Newcomers Andrea Stella on behalf of McLaren and James Vowles for Williams will be joined by Alessandro Alunni Bravi, who has taken on the team principal role for Alfa Romeo, although officially he’s known as team representative.

Alunni Bravi will be working in tandem with Andreas Seidl, who has come in as Sauber Group CEO with an overview of the whole organisation. The German’s main task is to prepare the ground for Audi’s arrival, and it’s been agreed that as such he can’t commit to attending 23 Grands Prix, with all the time away from the factory that would entail.

Thus Alunni Bravi, who doubles up as Sauber’s managing director, will be the public face of the team on race weekends, and the man who liaises with the FIA and F1 and so on.

Although he’s been a paddock regular for several years even within the F1 world the 48-year-old Alunni Bravi is not widely known, as he’s always been careful to keep a low profile. By necessity that now changes. The team’s recent launch live stream was the first time that fans around the world got to see and hear him.

Trained as lawyer, Alunni Bravi has held a wide variety of roles in different forms of motorsport over the years, sometimes juggling several overlapping jobs at once.

After a brief period as a journalist he worked in management roles at the Coloni F3000 and Trident GP2 teams, and later the N.Technology WTCC outfit.

He gained a different view of the sport when he was involved in event organising with the Cagliari GP F3000 race, the WRC Rally Sardinia, Formula Masters and the TCR series. For a while he worked for the company that owned the WRC rights for Italy.

He also moved into driver management, working for several years with Nicolas Todt’s All Road concern. Later he formed his own company, notably looking after Stoffel Vandoorne and Robert Kubica.

In 2010 he became the general counsel for the ART team and Formula E manufacturer Spark, and it was his connections with Fred Vasseur that saw him join Sauber in 2017. Initially he held a legal role before also being named MD.

He’s thus gained a lot of management experience in a variety of areas over the years, and as such he presents an interesting contrast to the recent trend towards engineers taking the top job, as exemplified by the likes of Stella, Vowles and Mike Krack at Aston Martin.

“I approach this with humility,” he tells Motorsport.com. “I am part of a…