Otmar Szafnauer has revealed that he recruited heavily during his time as Force India boss. The man who later managed Alpine F1 was personally in charge of hiring.
“There were 280 people when I started, 408 when I left” recalls Szafnauer on the High Performance podcast.
“So I hired a few people. I hired them all personally.”
One of his allies for this task was Andrew Green, who helped him determine the contours of the team and strengthen it: “Together we assessed the areas of expertise that a Formula 1 team required and which we did not have.”
“We then looked to recruit the best possible people in these areas. And again, recruitment: how do we get the right people to leave Red Bull and come to Force India? We need to make sure that it’s a place where It’s good to work.”
Among the most notable recruits, Szafnauer managed to attract Guru Johl, aerodynamic engineer at Red Bull, which attracted some jealousy from Toto Wolff, the director of Mercedes F1: “I called Toto and said ‘we have a senior aerodynamicist coming from Red Bull to join us’.
“And he said, ‘What? Why doesn’t he come to Mercedes?’ He couldn’t believe that a senior executive from Red Bull would consider going to Force India, but that’s because we had a reputation as a great place to work.”
Szafnauer remembers that the teams had a sort of competition, initiated notably by Wolff, to see who had the nicest garages, but Force India did not participate: “I remember people telling me that Toto used to walk around the pit lane and look at who had the nicest garage.”
“From the pit lane you could see everyone’s garages. He would walk around and spot the best ones. I think it was Red Bull at the time. And he would tell his sporting director, Ron Meadows, that ‘He wanted something better than that. And that’s what he did. And it translated into a lot of other things.’
“But like I said, I knew we didn’t have the money to do these things even if we wanted a better garage, we couldn’t. The only thing I wanted at Force India was was a good place to work, and that was our differentiator.”
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