This season Alpine has struggled to live up to its goal of maintaining fourth in the championship, which it claimed last year.
Luca de Meo, group CEO of Alpine's parent company Renault, decided to take swift action by replacing Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi with Philippe Krief before last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.
On Friday, Alpine announced further management changes, with team boss Szafnauer and long-time sporting director Alan Permane also departing ahead of the summer break.
When asked to explain the wholesale management reshuffle, Famin said the team and Szafnauer were no longer on the same page in terms of how quickly the team is making progress.
"We were not on the same line or timeline on how to recover or reach the level of performance we were aiming for, we decided to split our ways," Famin said.
When pressed further by Autosport on how the timelines of Szafnauer and Alpine diverged, Famin replied: "I think we have a different view of the way of doing it. And of course it's also in terms of timeline but I think we have not exactly the same view on doing things."
In addition to Rossi, Szafnauer and Permane being cast aside, Alpine's chief technical officer Pat Fry is also leaving, moving across to Williams.
Famin says its complete management reshuffle does not mean its 100-race plan of fighting for the championship is delayed.
"What is happening is the second stage of the Alpine plan. It's not going backwards, it's moving forwards.
"Of course, it's lot of change but it's also an opportunity to consolidate the foundation to go further and faster.
"The key objective is we want to win races and championships as soon as possible. We need to improve constantly our cars, the full package, from race to race, from year to year.
"We know that it's not easy. We know a change of regulations is generally a good milestone for changing the ranking and it's quite a reasonable target but it will not be a step.
"We will be improving constantly up to that."
Famin says his first job is to use the time around the mandatory summer shutdown to make a full assessment of where the team can improve.
"I will assess with the whole team what is the real situation. I will take the necessary time to do this assessment," he added.
"The results not matching expectations. We were fourth last year, we were aiming to keep fourth place and maybe get closer to third.
"We are not where we wanted and we will work hard with the teams, with the Enstone guys and the Viry guys to extract the best possible performance for our car."
