With just three points on the board, Fred Vasseur feels while Alfa Romeo have taken a step forward in “pure performance”, they’ve “failed” when it comes to points.
Alfa Romeo headed in the summer break on the back of a points-scoring race at the Hungarian Grand Prix with Kimi Raikkonen bringing his C41 home in tenth place.
That, however, wasn’t enough to hold onto eighth place with the team overhauled by Williams, who managed a double points-haul.
Scoring just three points in the first half of this campaign, Alfa Romeo trail the Grove team by seven points and, it has to be said, with little sign that they can make up the deficit.
It has been a disappointing haul for team principal Fred Vasseur, who believes the C41 is a marked improvement on last year’s car, they are just not getting the points.
“It’s really a mixed feeling,” he said, “but I think we have made a good step forward in terms of pure performance, probably the best on the grid.
“If you take the gap to pole position I think we have the best improvement between the 10 teams, and this is for different reasons, with Ferrari doing a good job on the PU side. On the chassis, we also did a good development, and it’s paying off.
“Now I have a mixed feeling because the target is not to do a good percentage, it’s to score points, and we have failed. I would like to have many more points in the championship.”
Raikkonen and his team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi have missed out on four occasions, P11 in Bahrain, Monaco, Baku and France.
“I think that if you have a look we could have done [scored more], but for different reasons we haven’t, and one of the reasons is that we have so many cars now finishing races, so many cars at the end,” Vasseur added.
“When you are P12 or P13 in qualy, then you will finish P12 or 13 and you won’t score points
“If I want to be positive, as I’ve said before, what is most important for the future of the company is that we’ve made a good step for the first time in a while. The last two seasons were tough seasons, last year, due to external circumstances, I would say.
“But we stayed focused on the targets and we continued to improve and to do the job and in the end, it’s a good step forward for the team.”
