Brivio explains key differences between F1 and MotoGP roles
New Alpine racing director Davide Brivio has revealed the biggest differences in his responsibilities in Formula 1 compared to MotoGP.
Alpine moved to capture the signature of Brivio over the winter to lead its trackside operations in F1 this year following the Italian’s remarkable success in MotoGP.
Brivio was a key architect behind Suzuki successfully ending its winning drought in MotoGP in 2016 before leading the Japanese manufacturer to secure its first MotoGP world title in 20 years last season.
As part of a management reshuffle following the departure of former Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul, Brivio has been solely tasked with leading Alpine’s trackside team, while executive director Marcin Budkowski is in charge of overseeing car development - with both reporting to Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi.
It marks a departure from Brivio’s responsibilities at Suzuki, where he handled almost every aspect of setting up and running the race team, including the hiring of staff. Brivio believes the larger-scale team operation in F1 will enable him to better utilise his skills and streamline his focus.
“To be very honest, my responsibility was much wider, not wider in terms of responsibility, but what I was effectively doing was much more,” Brivio replied when asked how his responsibilities differed compared to his time at Suzuki.
“Being in this much bigger organisation, there are many roles like HR [Human Resources], or legal offices taking care of the contracts, marketing departments and communications, everything.
"In Suzuki, the organisation was smaller and basically I was going all through these sectors. Here they are very well organised through each individual sector, so there is more responsibility to participate and to take care [of].
“Let’s say less operative than before. Before I was also operative, other than being responsible. Here you can count on plenty of very good operations staff and the office is organised.
“In terms of the responsibilities, I am part of the management, and as part of the management with Laurent and Marcin, we have the responsibility to run the operation.
“The point will be to make the plans for the future, to decide where we want to go, splitting the different functions and the different roles. That’ll be the time also to make decisions, to make strategies - this is where the management has to be prepared.”
Brivio had his first experience of his new F1 role at Alpine in a trackside capacity last week during pre-season testing as he properly began direct work with Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
“It’s very interesting,” Brivio explained. “Many things to see and many information, many questions I'm doing.
“Of course it’s very exciting, the whole technology behind, the whole organisation behind [F1] compared to my previous experiences. There are similarities in a way.
“It’s a team sport, there are sportsmen, drivers or riders with similar problems and the engineers doing the jobs, planning the tests and setting out the car and whatever.
“Of course it’s a bigger organisation, more parameters, more parts and everything amplified, so that makes it interesting to learn and to understand as much as I can.”
