Frederic Vasseur’s Alfa Romeo have been on the up in Formula 1 so far in 2022. (Photo by Joe Portlock – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Alfa Romeo team principal Frederic Vasseur is furious with rival Formula 1 teams who are ‘playing games’ with the FIA in what he sees as an underhand plot to alter an important rule which affects speed.
F1 teams are subject to a minimum weight limit for their cars and drivers combined, which for 2022 was originally set at 795 kilograms. After complaints from some squads that the minimum limit was proving too tough to reach, that limit was reached by three kilograms, and some teams are understood to be asking for a further increase as they struggle to bring the weight of their newly-designed vehicles down .
While some teams, including the likes of Williams, McLaren, and Aston Martin, have been leaving vast areas of their cars unpainted in a desperate effort to shave off vital grams, Alfa Romeo were one of the only teams who were able to reach the minimum weight limit easily enough before the campaign began.
Now Vasseur says that the demands from other teams for the limit to be raised would merely punish his own personnel’s hard work and reward the failure of others.
‘Honestly, I don’t understand all the comments [about raising the weight limit again] because that I think it’s the target for everybody that when you are designing a racing car the weight is always the target number one,’ Vasseur told Autosport.
‘Nobody can be surprised with the weight at the last minute, I think that some teams played a game with the FIA expecting that the FIA at the last minute would increase the minimum weight [even more].’
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Red Bull’s RB18 and Mercedes’ W13 are two cars understood to be unable to hit the minimum weight limit as things stand, which will be costing them valuable lap time in comparison with rivals. Vasseur insists that meeting the limit was possible for every team, and that others who chose to prioritize aerodynamic choices over weight when developing their cars should not be given a backdoor solution by the governing body now.
‘[It would be] completely unfair, because during the [development] project we took some decisions in terms of complexity also linked to the weight, and we made our choice. And you know that the F1 world is like this, that everybody’s trying to play a game.
Valtteri Bottas has delivered a string of impressive performances for Alfa Romeo so far this season. (Photo by Peter J Fox/Getty Images)
‘It was crystal clear that the target of weight was completely achievable, that we are able to not be overweight. If some other teams are not at the weight limit, it’s because they took some other options, perhaps with some other advantages, but with the constraint of the weight.’
Alfa Romeo have been enjoying a resurgence so far in 2022, having spent the past few seasons as a back marker on the F1 grid. The Swiss outfit currently sits fifth in the constructors’ standings, with lead driver Valtteri Bottas eighth in the drivers’ rankings and Chinese rookie Guanyu Zhou 16th after scoring on his debut in Bahrain.
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