Frédéric Vasseur has revealed that he would have had contract talks with Kimi Räikkönen had the Finn not opted to retire from Formula 1 at the end of the 2021 season.
Räikkönen announced that he would be leaving Formula 1 midway through the year, but Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN Team Principal Vasseur would have been happy to discuss an extension to his contract had he not taken the decision to step down.
Whilst there were no guarantees that a contract extension would have been confirmed even with the talks, Vasseur says they would have covered all angles with Räikkönen had they gone ahead, and he did not rule out the Finn staying for a fourth season with Alfa Romeo.
“For sure, we would have discussed the point to understand the motivation and so for me it’s…you don’t have to do the year too much,” Vasseur is quoted as saying by GPFans.com. “It’s true that now it’s a bit different compared to before when we were doing 16 races or 17. Next year you have 23.
“You have 10 races at the end in 12 weeks or something like this, and that travelling around the world that you need really to have someone fully in. I think it’s quite human as a reaction that at one stage you want also to turn the page and move on with the family and so on.”
Alfa Romeo will field an all-new line-up in 2022, with Valtteri Bottas leading the team after leaving the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, where he will be joined by FIA Formula 2 race winner Guanyu Zhou, who becomes the first Chinese driver to race in Formula 1.
Vasseur says it is important the team have drivers who are completely motivated to race for them, and he believes Räikkönen was not one hundred per cent motivated during 2021 due to the fact Alfa Romeo were never in with a chance of scoring a podium finish.
“As a team, we need to have the guarantee that the guy will be fully dedicated, and I think Kimi was very clever into the approach over the summer,” said Vasseur. “At one stage he said ‘okay, guys, I did 22 years like this’.”