After the first three races of the season, Alfa Romeo sits in sixth place in the constructors’ championship, with Valtteri Bottas tenth and Guanyu Zhou fifteenth in the drivers’ standings.
Following this strong start to 2022, team principal Fred Vasseur acknowledged that Alfa Romeo has to stay in the development race if it really wants to keep up with its rivals during the upcoming grands prix.
“I’m very happy with the results of the first three events,” Vasseur told Motorsport.com referring to the team’s performances at the start of the season.
“We are also aware that the development will start now, at Imola and Barcelona, so we have to be vigilant and push when the time is right.”
“We have some updates in the next races, like everyone else, but they have to work as planned. We will have a new floor for Imola, it will only be that this week, but it seems that we are on the right track.
Alfa Romeo’s engine supplier Ferrari has yet to implement any upgrades, and team principal Mattia Binotto said the plan was to continue without upgrades at Imola because the sprint weekend format meant there would be little time. to test them.
However, Vasseur says the Swiss’ strategy is to introduce the updates as soon as possible, rather than worrying too much about the complexities of the schedule or the weekend format itself.
“If you think like that, after Imola there will be Miami, which is quite complicated. Then you have Barcelona, which is fine, but then there is Monaco, Baku and Montreal.”
“There are maybe two different approaches between all the teams. Is it better to bring a big package of improvements every four events or is it better to try to introduce a new component every weekend? We did it like that three years ago, because these last ones we did not develop the car. “.
“I think that strategy was very successful for us, so we will keep that focus. We will try to bring updates, not every race, but almost. “.
Vasseur also acknowledged that the sprint format makes it difficult to make changes to the car as it reduces testing time and set-up on the track, but insisted the team will be able to tackle it without any problems.
“For sure it will not be easy, especially since we are at the beginning of the season. We know the rules and for me it is not a drama. There are many championships around the world that have an hour of free practice, or even less, “he concluded. that of the Swiss team.
