For Alfa Romeo Sauber 2022 will be a season of total renewal. After having lined up the couple made up of Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi in the last 3 years, the Swiss team will line up on the grid this year with the expert Valtteri Bottas and the rookie Guanyu Zhou.
For the Swiss team, a relationship that has seen it linked to Ferrari on the drivers side since 2018 is thus interrupted. In that season, in fact, Sauber gave Charles Leclec, pupil of the Ferrari Driver Academy and fresh winner of the F2 championship, the possibility to make his debut in Formula 1 alongside Marcus Ericsson, showing all that talent that emerged overwhelmingly in the preparatory categories from Baku onwards.
When the Monegasque, after just one season in F1, was promoted to the Maranello team, his place was taken by Antonio Giovinazzi, another driver from the Ferrari orbit.
Does the decision to focus on the former Mercedes driver managed by Toto Wolff and on the Chinese from the Alpine Academy mean that the collaboration relationship with Ferrari is interrupted? According to Vasseur, this is not the case.
“We have decided to choose a different option, but that does not mean that there will not be the possibility of working with Ferrari again in the future”.
“These choices have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis because you can’t say ‘Ok, for the next 10 years you will always have a rookie’. Ferrari doesn’t need to have an F1 rookie every year ”.
“We have to evaluate the individual profiles, and this is an aspect understood by both sides”.
Vasseur, among other things, is closely evaluating the growth of a driver who is already part of the Sauber Academy: Théo Pourchaire.
Théo Pourchaire, Alfa Romeo
Photo by: Alfa Romeo
The Frenchman, winner of the German F4 championship in 2019, impressed both on his Formula 3 debut, fighting for the title against Oscar Piastri until the last round of Mugello in 2020, and on his Formula 2 debut.
Just last year Pourchaire amazed everyone in Monaco by taking an incredible pole and victory in Sunday’s Feature Race, and then finished the championship in fifth position with an overall haul of 140 points.
Although the Frenchman is one of the crystalline talents who is getting the most attention in the propaedeutic categories, Vasseur explained why he decided not to promote him to F1 in 2022.
“Sure, he won in Monaco, but a Formula 1 car is extremely complex and we will only have six days of testing before the start of the season. From my point of view it would have been too risky for him to make this leap now ”.
“I think it’s more appropriate for him to focus on the 2022 Formula 2 season and then we’ll see what happens in the future.”
“He had a really fantastic debut season in F2, but we must not forget that 18 months ago he was driving in Formula 4 and the leap from that category to Formula 3 was important”.
Vasseur then anticipated how Pourchaire will be engaged on several occasions this year driving an Alfa Romeo Sauber.
“He will certainly take part in some FP1s and we will also do a few days of testing in order to prepare him for the future. In any case, the most important thing for a driver who races in Formula 2 is to focus on winning that championship and not think about what will happen in the future ”.
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