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Vasseur: 'Alfa Romeo has made great progress'

Vasseur: 'Alfa Romeo has made great progress'

11-06-2021 18:26 Last update: 20:36
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GPblog.com

At the moment the Alfa Romeo team is in eighth place in the Constructors' Championship. They have only scored two points so far and are a considerable 23 points behind their first rival Alpine. Fred Vasseur still thinks that some steps have been made.

According to the team boss, the luck of drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi has not helped in the first races of the season. Bad luck and mistakes have prevented Alfa Romeo from getting better results, he believes.

"The standings don't really show everything, because I think our performance has been much more positive than just the two points we've grabbed so far," the team boss told the site of Formula Passion. "As a team we have made a big step forward, maybe the biggest of any team on the grid compared to 2020. The data speaks for itself: in qualifying alone, the average gap to the pole position has decreased by about one percent, while in the race we have also made significant progress, more than half a percent. On a grid where the teams are close together, it's a big leap forward."

Alfa Romeo made mistakes too

Giovinazzi and Raikkonen have scored one point each so far. Although Giovinazzi wins the qualifying battle, the Finn scores higher in the race. Vasseur admits that he cannot blame luck alone, but that mistakes were also made.

"Of course there were some specific cases where we could and should have done better, like Giovinazzi's pit stop in Bahrain when he was driving in the points or Kimi's accident in Portugal. In many cases, however, it was out of our control. Antonio's race in Spain, for example, was ruined by a problem with the FIA's control system, which prevented him from joining the group under Safety Car conditions. Or I think of Kimi in Imola, when he was deducted two points for a controversial penalty; or again in Imola, when Antonio was slowed down by a torn visor that ended up in the rear brake duct. Such problems make a good result difficult, because there is no room for error when the margins are so small. We have to keep working to improve everything we have under control and hope that fate will resolve itself," said Vasseur.