F1 | Vasseur assures F1 rivals "played games" with FIA about minimum weight regulation
The Alfa Romeo Team Principal spoke on how the teams in the category are "playing games" not respecting the 2022 regulation about the weight of F1 challenger cars.
With the 2022 season coming completely with new regulations for the category pinnacle of motorsport, the weight became an important topic in the design of the teams’ challengers in order to keep competition within the rules, become the strongest on the grid, and still manage the best conditions out of speed and safety out of the cars.
That’s why, in the preparation for this milestone season, the FIA and the teams cooperated in their way to reach the most ideal minimum and maximum limit of what an F1 car plus the driver must weigh, and that’s from 792kg-795kg.
In the end, after pre-season testing and some adjustments, the limit was raised to 798kg after some teams allegedly were still struggling to meet the instruction.
Talking exclusively with motorsport.com, Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur stated that F1 rivals were definitely “playing games” with the FIA to raise the weight limit regulation and still do not respect it, as Alfa Romeo is the only team believed to have met the standards from the FIA for this season.
"Honestly, I don't understand all the comments because I think it's the target for everybody that when you are designing a racing car the weight is always the target number one,”
"Nobody can be surprised with the weight at the last minute, I think that some teams played a game with the FIA expecting that the FIA at the last minute would increase the minimum weight [even more],” Vasseur said to motorsport.com.
"But this would have been completely unfair, because during the project we took some decisions in terms of complexity also linked to the weight, and we made our choice. And you know that the F1 world is like this, that everybody's trying to play a game."
The Frenchman added that, in his opinion, it is obvious how designing an F1 challenger within the rules was totally possible, and if some teams didn’t manage to do it, is because of their particular designs.
"It was crystal clear that the target of weight was completely achievable, that we are able to not be overweight,"
"If some other teams are not at the weight limit, it's because they took some other options, perhaps with some other advantages, but with the constraint of the weight," he concluded.
