Another F1 figure linked to the Ecclestone era has gone

Another link between Formula 1’s past and present has been broken for now. Alessandro Alunni may not be a household name for Bravi fans but his departure has been announced Sauber Puts even greater distance between F1’s corporate present and its past as Bernie Ecclestone’s private fiefdom.

Alunni Bravi qualified as a lawyer and worked as a journalist for Italian publications Vroom and AutoSprint, before landing a full-time gig covering F1 for AutoSprint in the early 2000s. Initially on weekends. But their creation was arguably a request to pay attention to some of the legal nuances associated with organizing the European F3000 race in the Sardinian coastal city of Cagliari in 2002.

Euro F3000, like the GP2 series it replaced, was a venture run by and for Ecclestone’s friends, and the request came from the Cagliari event’s patron, Pasquale Lattunedu, a proud Sardinian and Bernie’s paddock ‘enforcer’.

For a minister without a specific portfolio in F1, Lattuneddu had extraordinary power and was treated with the same respect usually reserved for a mafia don. Paddock passes could be given or pulled at his request. If you were a team manager and they ordered that one of your trucks be parked completely out of the way with the rest of the trucks, someone would have to drop whatever other urgent job they had and keep it in perfect condition.

Although it ultimately proved short-lived, the F3000 race around Cagliari’s Stadio Sant’Elia was a passion project for Latunedu. All expenses were borne by selected F1 media to promote it.

Alunni Bravi was rewarded for his work by receiving a wider role in the following year’s event, which also included the ‘Sardinia F3 Masters’ race won by the rising star. Robert KubicaWhen the time is up, Alunni Bravi will become his manager.

Lattuneddu’s patronage opened doors elsewhere into the wider Ecclestone friends and family network. After a stellar performance at Trident Racing in GP2, Alunni Bravi received an offer from another extremely well-connected individual, Nicolas Todt, co-founder of ART Grand Prix and owner of All Road Management, whose portfolio included . Felipe Massa, Jules Bianchi And charles leclercThe relationships Aluni Bravi built here led to his move to Sauber in 2017 via former ART co-owner Fred Vasseur, who was leaving Renault’s F1 team after a short but unhappy stint.

It is understood that, after Renault’s torturous political absurdities, Vasseur wanted a colleague at senior level – and made the installation of Alunni Bravi on the Sauber board a condition of accepting the team’s leading role. step of wasseypur ferrari Six years later the cumbersome job title of ‘Managing Director and Team Representative’ developed for Alunni Bravi, as incoming CEO Andreas Seidl did not want to be the leading man.

Having spent so many years working quietly and happily behind the scenes, turning up to televised press conferences in team kit represents a culture shock. It is no surprise that Alunni Bravi’s preferred method as ‘team representative’ was a selective gathering of the media over coffee and pastries, with no less favorable invitation-only meetings.

It has now been eight years since Liberty Media appointed Bernie to the role of ‘Chairman Emeritus’. An American corporation beholden to shareholders and compliance cannot afford a handshake-deal businessman hopping around on the deck. Shortly after, news spread that Pasquale would not return to his duties in the 2017 season. An era had passed.

And now another old ‘face’ has come to the fore. But, given Alunni Brawi’s relative youth (50), for how long?