THIS IS FRÉDÉRIC VASSEUR
Few of Formula 1’s itinerant gin palaces have witnessed such great shifts in fortune (and ownership) as Alfa Romeo’s stately tented hospitality unit, which first saw service in the mid-2000s when BMW owned the Swiss-based team. A rotating cast of characters has inhabited it since then; as F1 Racing ascends the stairs within the light, airy central vestibule, we pass the chair Robert Kubica inhabited when interviewed for his first cover feature over 11 years ago. This afternoon a moderately communicative Kimi Räikkönen is wrapping up an open media session in the same corner and, as the assembled scribblers stagger downstairs wondering if their voice recorders contain anything useable, a contemplative stillness returns once more.
Innumerable faces have come and gone but this place was built to last – probably for the best, since for the first half of this decade the team formerly known as Sauber was on its financial uppers. Now, with Tetra Pak money in the bank and an increasingly productive alliance with Ferrari and Alfa Romeo paying dividends on the track, this team is going places once again – thanks in part to the guiding hand of the man we’ve come to see.
Prodding a recessed metal button in the wall grants access to one of this unit’s more cloistered enclosures, screened behind sliding doors and shuttered glass. Relaxing in his office is Frédéric Vasseur, one of motor racing’s sharpest but least ostentatious movers and shakers. Apart from those currently on the Red Bull books, most of the drivers on the F1 grid have passed through teams run by him on their way to the top…
What was it that set you on the road to Formula 1? It’s a passion, not for F1 in itself but for racing. I started at school, doing karting, then afterwards I tried to develop my Formula Renault team. For sure it was very small and we had
