Frédéric Vasseur says the challenging weekend in Azerbaijan will only make his Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN team stronger, with none of the team letting their head drop despite missing out on points.
Heading into the first Canadian Grand Prix since 2019, Vasseur, the Team Principal at Alfa Romeo, says he is expecting an immediate reaction to the disappointment from the Baku City Circuit, and he hopes that both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu can contend for points on Sunday afternoon.
Alfa Romeo fell to sixth in the Constructors’ Championship thanks to their no-score in Azerbaijan and the double points score for the BWT Alpine F1 Team. They currently have forty-one points, six less than their French rivals but fourteen more than seventh placed Scuderia AlphaTauri.
Vasseur is hoping for a clean weekend at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with the aim of proving that the performance they showed in Azerbaijan was a one off, and they can return to the kind of form they showed in the opening seven races where they scored points in all but one event.
“Baku was a challenging weekend for the team, but these are the circumstances in which you see the real mettle of a group,” said Vasseur. “Nobody, neither in the garage nor at home, let their heads drop: what you saw was an immediate reaction to bounce back from the disappointment.
“We are determined to come to Canada to prove that last week’s result is just an outlier and I am confident we will do just that. We have plenty of positives to work with – we saw excellent pace with Zhou and we know it would have brought us points had we finished the race.
“We will aim for a clean weekend and to get back on track immediately.”
