“Just a joke, a joke for me”– Alfa Romeo team principal Frederic Vasseur complains about the tragic loss it may deal with flexible wing change.
Alfa Romeo was one of the teams in 2021 to be a suspect of violating the flexibility limit of bodywork, and the team principal Frederic Vasseur is baffled by the FIA decision to introduce more stringent flexible bodywork tests.
Unlike Red Bull, which is in the same soup, Alfa Romeo can’t afford to make the amendments, as it will force them to shed more funds, and they already function on a humble budget.
“It will affect everybody,” said Vasseur. “At the end of the day, we have the regulation with the maximum deformation under load, and I think we are not more clever than the others. Everybody was sticking to the limit, and the FIA decided to change the limits.
“It’s a bit surprising, but they changed the [test] load and the deformation [permitted] – and in the course of the season. It’s not the introduction of a new test or a new way to do the test, and it’s just that they change the [load] value.
“This is the first time that we see something like this, because if you are at the limit, if you did a good job, you have to produce new wings. But in terms of cost-saving, it’s a huge, huge, huge effort. We have time to do it, but it will cost us a fortune.”
Just a joke
While Vasseur has kept a mum on the exact figures of the losses, he hasn’t stayed silent on the absurdity of the change, and according to him, it is “just a joke”.
“We are all fighting to try to save money, to speak [about] reducing one person at the track. And then we have these kinds of things that is just a joke, a joke for me.”
