Frédéric Vasseur says there are no guarantees that Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN will continue with Ferrari power units beyond their current contract with the Italian outfit.
Alfa Romeo’s current contract with Ferrari runs until the end of the 2021 season, but after the disappointing 2020 season that saw the team score only eight points across the seventeen races, there is uncertainty to whether or not they will renew their contract.
Vasseur, the Team Principal of Alfa Romeo, says Ferrari has ‘mostly’ been a solid partner with the team, but the decline in performance means that making a decision to whether or not to remain with them is not as clear cut as it would have usually been.
“We’re tied to Ferrari until the end of 2021,” said Vasseur to Swiss publication, Blick. “Then we’ll have to go over the books because the next contract should run from 2022 to 2026 because of the new cars.
“You can never tell. It’s like with a marriage. No one guarantees you’ll stay with the same woman forever – like me! You always have to take into account in a partnership that there will be ups and downs … So we have to ask ourselves: What’s the best deal?
“So far, Ferrari has mostly been a solid partner.”
When asked whether he felt the Ferrari power unit was partly to blame for the team’s poor season, Vasseur admitted he couldn’t disagree with the statement, particularly when the results of the works Scuderia Ferrari team and the other customer at Haas F1 Team were also well below expectations.
“That’s your interpretation, but I can’t really disagree with you,” said Vasseur. “Let’s say that the team slid into the crisis 80 percent because of Ferrari. We certainly lost 0.3 to 0.4 seconds per lap to our rivals.”
“Just how big the Italians’ problems were was shown by the second half [of the season] when we were fighting against the factory team and even finished ahead of them in Abu Dhabi! Except for reliability, we can’t be satisfied with the results – but for Ferrari this year must have been a disaster.”
