F1 | Alfa Romeo Sauber, Vasseur cautious: "Look at Red Bull and Mercedes, it took them years to win"

Only time and work will be able to say something real about the project Alfa Romeo Sauber. The team principal Frederic Vasseur, after two disastrous years, does not want to place too many expectations on the Swiss team's 2018: “Alfa Romeo certainly cannot expect to be in this type of situation. The goal for us is to get back up to speed (of the mid-table teams, ed.)" - reports crash.net. “We are far away, we were very far away last year. The first step for us would be to reach mid-table. (When we recover, ed.) we will be increasingly attractive for engineers, for pilots, for everyone. We started from behind, from far away. We have to be realistic: I know perfectly well that it will take time to get results and improve. I don't want to say that we shouldn't get results next week. We need to improve next week compared to today, we need to improve in Bahrain compared to Melbourne.".

In this regard, Vasseur cited examples of victorious teams over time: “You can't build a team (immediately, ed.). If you look at other projects like the Red Bull ten years ago, the Mercedes seven years ago, it took some time to be able to fight for championships and win. In the case of Mercedes, they inherited Brawn, who were world champions. It took him five years to become world champion again. It will be a medium-term project to get back to mid-table, it won't happen in a year or two years. Also look at the Force India, it's a good reference and a good project. They were more than behind us and built something very strong. They have been consistently fifth, fourth for the last two or three seasons, but it has taken them ten years to get to this rate.".

Federico Martino