Alfa Romeo to switch focus to 2022 early - Fred Vasseur

Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo to switch focus to 2022 early - Vasseur

Alfa Romeo look set to follow Haas in cutting development of the 2021 car early

Ewan Gale

Sunday 31 January 2021 19:01 Updated: 19:09

Alfa Romeo team principal Fred Vasseur has indicated his team will switch focus to the development of its 2022 challenger early in the season.

Formula 1 heads into the final year of this regulation set carrying over the vast majority of the 2020 cars - with only tweaks to the aerodynamic make-up of the machines differentiating last season to this.

Haas boss Guenther Steiner revealed last season his team would stop 2021 development early in January and it seems Alfa Romeo won't be far behind.

"The plan is already on the paper, we started on '22 early January," he told GPFans Global.

"Then we will have a mix between '21 and '22 the first couple of weeks and then switch to '22.

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"The question is now to see where we could be beginning of March to see if it makes sense to invest and to develop, because we must also keep in mind the difference in terms of incomes from position to position this year is huge.

"It could be an important topic but clearly, with a new project, completely new, from scratch, it makes sense to start from as soon as possible because at the beginning of the development of a new project, the gradient of improvement is huge and if you are in this pass, you can make a huge amount of points."

Vasseur indicated the decision on when to cut the development of this years car would be forced by the lack of upgrade-space given the sport is at the end of a regulation cycle.

On whether he would wait to see how the car performed before cementing a focus, he said: "Yeah, for sure, but it is to see at the end of the first month at 80 per cent on '22 or 70 per cent on '22.

"It is a trade-off but the difference is not huge at all. At the end of the project, as we are now, it is more and more difficult to progress so I think we will switch all quite soon to '22."