Otmar Szafnauer has questioned two of his former F1 teams - Aston Martin and Alpine - as they continue to und✅erperform during the 20✱24 season.

Szafnauer was a senior figure during the Silverstone-base꧒d outfit’s days at Force India before remaining a key part of the team’s Racing Point and now Aston Martin era.

Under his leadership, Force India tended to ou🐷t-perform teams which had significantly bigger budgets than them - something that remained up until 2020.

However, since rebranding to Aston Martin - and Lawrence Stroll’s 🧜plethora of investment, aside from the fi🐈rst half of 2023, the team has struggled to deliver on its potential.

Szafnauer left the team in 2022 before joining Alpi🦹ne as their new team boss for 18 months.

Refl🦹ecting on Aston Martin’s underwhelming year so far, Szafnauer said on the : “Lawrence [Stroll💎] has put in place the infrastructure required for it to be a top team,” Szafnauer said of Aston Martin.

“They’ve hired, and🧔 I was part of it, a bunch of good people there. They have two good ಌdrivers, and I’ve worked with both of them – Lance [Stroll] and Fernando [Alonso].

“For whatever reason – I’m not that close to it – my expectation was that their on-track p🧸erformance would have been a little bit better than it is now. I think they were maybe the sixth or seventh-fastest team at Silverstone.

“My anticipation was that they would be fighting for the top three,♎ or definitely the top four. So there’s something amiss there or adrift. I don’t know what that is, you’ve got to be close to it to understand what it is.”

Szafnauer hinted that the expansion in facilities has potentially impact💛ed how well they are “collaborating”.

“Is it really a great place to work? A🌱re they really collaborating?” Szafnauer added. “Is everyone pulling in the same 🌠direction? Do you have somebody in charge that understands the entire car, and is making good trade-off decisions between the trade-offs? Aerodynamics, mechanical, car drivability, drivers – all that kind of stuff.

“I don’⛄t know, I’ve been removed, I know what we did when I was there.”

Alpine have undergone a number of management changes since Szafnauer’s departure, recently appointing Oliver Oakes🦹 as their ꦚnew team principal.

Szafnauer feels A♐lpine♎ were going in the right direction under his leadership before being forced out.

“Alpine is another reset,” he explained.“It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get the opportunity to co🔯ntinue on the road that I was going down.

“What I was doing there was convincing really good engineers and talent, not ♒at the highest l🏅evel but at the mid-level where the performance actually comes from, to come to join the team, because of the project that we were working on.”