2023 F1 changes shows team boss role may be overrated

F1’s team boss merry-go-round started with Mattia Binotto leaving Ferrari at the end of November to be replaced by Alfa Romeo’s Fred Vasseur.

Andreas Seidl left McLaren to become Alfa’s CEO, with Andrea Stella replacing him at the Woking squad while Alessandro Alunni Bravi was appointed Alfa’s team representative on F1 weekends.

In January, Mercedes strategy director James Vowles became the successor to Jost Capito at Williams.

Those changes mean Aston Martin’s Krack is now the fifth-longest serving team principal in F1 despite only joining Aston in January last year, right before his predecessor Otmar Szafnauer headed to Alpine.

“I was surprised about that as well, about how these things went, especially in the very, very short period of time,” Krack said when confronted with that stat.

But with F1 teams evolving into organisations with strong, decentralised leadership structures, Krack thinks the team boss role is perhaps not as crucial as it once was.

“It shows also that the role of the team principal is maybe sometimes a bit overrated, because if you can change it so quickly and there is no big impact, it tells also something.

“It seems like you can give this job to anyone or to someone from another team. I’m surprised about the quick releases that we have seen. This I would not have expected.

“Other than that, we must not forget, F1 teams have developed into big organisations where the owners are not any more the team principals.

“The whole sport, the whole organisation takes a different way. Some have engineers as team principals, some have more an old-fashioned rule. But we shall see ultimately what is the way forward.”

The German argues stability within a team is still crucial to allow for a swift decision making process.

“I think consistency and stability is very, very important,” Krack explained. “You need to have the trust in the people that you do not have to argue all the time if you want a different direction, or if you want to develop the company or the business into a different direction.

“These are all not single-minded decisions. They are decided after a collective discussion what is the best way forward. So it is about managing an organisation with a certain style.”

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