F1
Editorial – Prost-Rossi score settlement
Laurent Rossi taken to task © DPPI
The show offered by Alpine F1 Team these last few weeks is certainly distressing, and great is the temptation to shoot the ambulance. But the ongoing purge should not serve as a springboard for personal revenge and public score-settling. Or was it necessary to risk it earlier, when the target was still responsible, valiant and powerful, not once on the ground and contractually deprived of his voice. This somewhat Judeo-Christian conception does not absolve the sins or other errors committed by the management ofAlpine, and does not arouse any particular compassion either. Our position as journalists prohibits us from doing so, a matter of ethics. Criticism (when it is not unnecessarily brusque) and the freedom to blame guarantee the sincerest praise when it is deserved.
So why open up about these moods? Quite simply because as a spectator of this Art commedy, I felt involuntarily taken to task by the diatribe ofAlain Prost towards Laurent Rossi in the pages of our colleagues atTeam. " Laurent Rossi is the best example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, that of an incapable leader who thinks he can overcome his incompetence through his arrogance and his lack of humanity towards his troops. He thought he understood everything from the start when he was completely wrong. His management broke the momentum that had been built since 2016 to achieve these podiums in 2020, and this victory (at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2021. Editor’s note).”
The best revenge is silent, but the Professor knows that. It is not a question of responding to an attack on the track by Ayrton Senna, but to a dismissal that occurred at the end of 2021. Why is the immense champion that he is risking such media exposure? Has he fallen into the Off trap? Because the danger consists of holding out the stick to be beaten as soon as we set foot on the ground of exemplarity. “ Distinguishing the Man from the Artist ". The expression is fashionable. The Artist had an unassailable, legendary career; his reconversion into the boss of an eponymous Formula 1 team was less unanimous. From internal tensions with partners to sluggish performances, from a mechanics' strike during the 2000 French Grand Prix to the judicial liquidation pronounced the following year, the five seasons of Prost GP were turbulent. Managing a team – and quite simply a company – is no easy task, even when you have the codes of the microcosm of F1. Passion sometimes makes us lose our reason, so let's try to move on, because a stable Alpine strong would benefit everyone, actors and spectators alike.
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Romain Bernard
Editor-in-chief of AUTOhebdo
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Jacques Morin
03/08/2023 at 12:25 a.m.
I don't know Laurent Rossi any more than Alain Prost, other than what I read about him in the press and more particularly in Ah. However, what Prost said to L'Equipe, I could have done following my readings... it is obvious that Rossi is not from the "serag" and that his management was not in agreement with what is happening in F1. Okay, business has become rule number 1, nonetheless: the track delivers a different result than media stunts and financial arrangements with lousy gains. What did Prost do to you? And this kind of "Alpine bashing" which comes up regularly in your pages, in contrast to the augmented reality image that you give of Peugeot in Endurance, that's why? What interests me is to know why, Prost, who he doesn't have his tongue in his pocket, did he wait until Rossi was OUT to bombard him so roundly... It's up to you journalists to give us some clues. Thank you and long live Ah.
DANIEL MEYERS
03/08/2023 at 09:26 a.m.
Really ? An editorial reproduced in full here, it's the first time! And why do ? to ask Mr A. Prost to be exemplary, you qualify his remarks as a diatribe, everyone has their own opinion, at the beginning of the editorial we understand that you do not share his opinion, then you transcribe his ' diatribe' in full, you should know! As for the biased summary of the life of his team (A thought here moved to some 3000 participants at the Prost GP convention in Magny-Cours in September 2001, there must be quite a few who read AH) you know that Peugeot gave him a child in the back, you know that the 'strike' was that of the Peugeot staff, not that of the "mechanics" you must have read his book? The wonderful editorial journalist that you are cannot not have done it! So you know that Peugeot AND Renault are associated to ensure that the Team runs, exemplary you say, so after reading the editorial for the youngest who must ask themselves a lot of questions on this subject , for all those who have not gone into the details of this story, publish an article in the 'Classic' section for example to explain with exemplary this lamentable part of the history of French F1.
JACQUES MESNIER
02/08/2023 at 09:11 a.m.
As you rightly say, the artist PROST is a reference. Then, Renault Ambassador, then “professor” at Mc Laren, no one found fault with it. His company ? Scuttled from the start, by the change of PSA manager. It's easy to blame him. Laurent ROSSI? What did he create, or demonstrate? He arrived at Alpine along the way and gave himself a role that harmed the F1 team. It wasn't Alain Prost who "fired" him, as far as I know. I remember a "back page" of AH from a long time ago, in which you said that Mr. Schumacher was a normal driver and that his opponents were just "weepers", who just had to make vicious shots, like him (basically). Leave the honest historical and constructive figures of motorsport in peace. Respect them. You don't know what could have happened in the shadows of the Renault team-Alpine F1. Jacques MESNIER.