Alfa Romeo has emerged as a contender for the best of the rest in 2022, with the Swiss team experiencing one of the biggest – if not the biggest – leaps in performance from last year to this year. F1 correspondent Lawrence Barretto spoke to outspoken team principal Fred Vasseur to find out how the Sauber-led operation went from laggards to regular points scorers – and genuine contenders for the P4 in the constructors’ championship.
The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix summed up Alfa Romeo’s “painful” 2021 campaign (as Vasseur puts it), with mechanical failures ending the respective races of Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi early. They managed just 13 points from 22 races to finish ninth in the constructors’ championship, the worst full season Vasseur has had since joining in mid-2017.
The result, however, was not unexpected. For Vasseur, with the full backing of the team’s Swedish billionaire owner Finn Rausing, it was a necessary pain. It was decided that there would be no development for the whole 2021 season. The car that Raikkonen and Giovinazzi had in the first race would be the same as the one they had in Abu Dhabi. They accepted that performance would decline as the year progressed as rivals continued upgrades and found more rhythm.
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Instead, the technical team – led by Jan Monchaux – was given all that money to spend on the 2022 car, which was designed to sweep away new regulations and thus gave the Swiss team a chance to make a big step forward this season.
They used every minute of that creative thinking time and all of their wind tunnel racing and CFD allowance on the C42 – and the result was “an extreme design” that resulted in one of the most refined and detailed cars in the launch season. “It was tough for the team, but it paid off,” Vasseur said.
It’s not free. After nine races they have 51 points, almost four times the total they managed last year. The car – one of the most detailed on the grid – is capable of scoring points in every race, with Q2 being the minimum in qualifying. It’s a huge step forward.
But their turnaround in form is much more than just this decision to focus everything on 2022. The Ferrari powertrain they lead, thanks to a strong relationship that dates back to 2010, has taken “a good step” forward, according to Vasseur. And they benefit from an impressive recruitment of drivers.
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Ten-time winner Valtteri Bottas joined the Mercedes team – and seemed to be reborn. He relishes the chance to lead the team and step out of the shadow of Lewis Hamilton. This injection of desire boosted morale and produced consistent results throughout the season. Of the 51 points scored, Bottas is responsible for 48 of them.
But that doesn’t mean Zhou disappointed. The Chinese driver exceeded expectations, learned quickly and took advantage of being taken under the wing of Bottas. He scored a point on his debut, under pressure from the world’s greatest nation, and would have scored more – beyond his superb eighth in Canada – had it not been for his reliability.
It was Alfa Romeo’s Achilles’ heel – and if not for the series of mechanical problems they would probably be fourth and comfortable among the manufacturers instead of sixth. Once they are successful, getting both cars into the points in every race should become the minimum requirement.
“Part of the reliability issues come from us, part of the issues come from Ferrari,” says Vasseur. “In Ferrari, I have full confidence that they will fix it. I don’t want to focus on that. On our side, we started off on the wrong foot in Barcelona [in pre-season running] with bouncing and damaged monocoque. As we could not repair on the spot, we lost the first days. Then it was like a snowball: we wanted to come back too soon and we had more worries, especially with Zhou, during the events. It was painful.
Another element that has helped is the continued financial support of owner Finn Rausing and title sponsor Alfa Romeo – as well as the suite of business partners they have onboarded, including 27 new ventures for this year.
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That doesn’t mean they have an endless pit of money – Vasseur still had a budget to work with and due to increasing freight costs they had to halt development of the wing before they had scheduled for Silverstone. But they have a solid financial base, which has enabled the team to upgrade the Hinwil facility to bring it up to par with F1’s top teams.
“The hardware of the facility is a mega,” says Vasseur. “But when BMW left [at the end of 2009] until 2016/2017, it was a difficult period for the company. The level of investment was very low. The hardware looked great, then when you look deep into the details, it wasn’t that brilliant! So we’ve spent the last three or four years investing a fortune to bring the facility up to standard.
“We have taken a step in every area, including the new simulator but also the wind tunnel software. We have invested a fortune and I think now we are at F1 level. That is one of the reasons for the performance we’re showing this year.
Vasseur now says the challenge is to stabilize the ship – and to keep getting stronger. They are currently just below the cost cap – but he hopes they will get there next year. The focus will be on spending money wisely and efficiently, taking steps from year to year rather than trying to run before you can walk and risk falling back. He hopes their experience of operating on a shoestring budget will bear fruit in the years to come.
“There’s no point being P5 if you come back and fight with the medical car next year!” he says. “The new regulations and cost caps – we knew this was an opportunity for us. Technology is a big advantage for the best teams; they developed technology before the cost cap. There is still an advantage today and they will probably have it in the next two or three seasons. But we are more accustomed to dealing with this kind of [smaller] budget, so medium-term view, we can be optimistic.”
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With the rules remaining stable next year, the key to achieving the first stage of stability is making the right decisions about which games to keep next year and which ones they can afford to revise based on learnings in 2022.
“If you want to be efficient, you will have to carry over components”, explains Vasseur. “We’re deciding what we’re going to take back. We’ll take different options in terms of cooling, suspension, etc. It’s an engineer’s life – they want to reinvent the wheel every year! If we want to be efficient and having the budget to develop our car throughout the year, we have to carry over.
“We won’t stop development of the current car, but some of that development will be carried over to next year. It’s much less of an issue this season than last year. As we knew we wouldn’t bring no updates during the season, we were much more focused on operations and I think that was very helpful for our overall performance.”
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Alfa Romeo has done what it set out to do: take advantage of a major change in regulations to take a big step up the manufacturer pecking order. For a team with one of the smallest budgets in F1, that’s impressive. It didn’t quite run smoothly, thanks to poor reliability, but those are minor issues that can be fixed. The car’s baseline is solid – and gives them the platform to build the future.
Steady, like Vasseur’s goal, and there will be exciting times ahead.
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