Frederic Vasseur: If you doze off, you’re done

Alfa Romeo’s performance in 2022 can be considered the “breakthrough of the season”, as after six stages the Swiss team is fifth in the constructors’ championship, ahead of Alpine F1 and AlphaTauri. She already has 39 points in her account – exactly three times more than she scored in all of last year.

All but one of these points was earned by Valtteri Bottas, he is now in 8th place in the individual standings, while his partner, the championship debutant, Guanyu Zhou, has no luck yet. Leader Frederic Vasseur spoke about the state of affairs and prospects of the team in an interview with the Spanish newspaper AS.

“It’s become very common for our car to be third or fourth fastest, especially in races where we look a little better,” Vasseur said. “But this has to be done without too much enthusiasm. Teams may be pushing fewer technical innovations than they used to, as everyone is now working on tight budgets.

I don’t like to set specific goals for the team. Suppose we were aiming for seventh place, and what if our car was suddenly faster? (laughs) The most important thing is to constantly modernize the equipment. When you fall asleep, you’re done. It is worth taking a car in the same configuration two races in a row, you are immediately ahead of those who have recently been behind. Incidentally, all the novelties that we are preparing are working quite well.”

Since Zhou is a Formula 1 debutant, he needs time to adjust, for which Vasseur gives him 100 days. But Bottas immediately confirmed his reputation as one of the best drivers in the championship.

“I’ve known Valtteri for 15 years. It was not easy for him at Mercedes, as he was in the shadow of Lewis and performed with a contract for only one season. It is difficult to get rid of that pressure, the French manager continued. “When we started negotiations a year ago, I immediately told him that the best option would be to stay with Mercedes, if the opportunity arises.

But if it doesn’t work out, I suggested that he take on a new challenge: sign a long-term contract with us and become the leader of a team that will try to fight the same Mercedes in a few years. He understands that he will not become world champion in his first year with Alfa Romeo.”

Vasser also commented on the situation with the upgraded Aston Martin car, which looks suspiciously like the Red Bull RB18, which can be partly explained by the fact that an entire team of specialists who used to work in Milton Keynes are looking to join the team. Silverstone has moved.

“You cannot prevent people from moving from one team to another because this is a normal process,” said the head of Alfa Romeo. – If someone leaves Red Bull to continue his career with Aston Martin, then in six months he will work in a new place, applying all his knowledge and perfectly representing the working methods of his former team.

I know Aston Martin has real experts on copying, but I doubt it’s possible to build a car in two months using such methods. In addition, it is now forbidden to just copy from photos, you have to do independent research in a wind tunnel.

But this raises the serious problem of how to stay on a budget unless someone can find a way around these restrictions. That is why the FIA ​​must act hard, aggressively and strictly follow the rules. The federation is doing a great job with this task, but we must remember that all teams have different approaches.

For example, our collaboration with Ferrari can be compared to the way Williams works with Mercedes: we are a customer team, we only buy some components, power plants and gearboxes in Maranello.

Other teams are more dependent: Haas buys more parts from Ferrari, but the rules allow it. We have decided not to follow this path, because you only know in theory about the effectiveness of the components you buy. At the same time, if you buy everything the regulations allow, it could cost about $40 million, but in 2023 and 2024 the budget cap will be even lower, so you need to prepare for this in advance.

The ideology of Formula 1 is changing: if previously it was necessary to modernize the car as much as possible and find sponsors who could finance it, now you have to use the available resources as efficiently as possible.”

So far Alfa Romeo seems to be doing just fine.