Vasseur denies Schumacher to Alfa Romeo rumours

Mick Schumacher Alfa Romeo PA
Alfa Romeo team boss Frederic Vasseur has denied that Mick Schumacher is set to join the team from Haas in 2022.
The German has made a decent start to life in Formula 1, making few major mistakes and out-performing team-mate Nikita Mazepin in the first eight rounds of 2021.
However, being in the slowest car on the grid, he has failed to come close to scoring points and hasn’t really been able to fight other teams thus far.
With him being a part of the Ferrari academy, rumours have started to swirl about him making the move from Haas to Alfa Romeo next season, with Bernie Ecclestone suggesting it will happen.
The driver himself refused to rule anything out, but Vasseur says there’s nothing in the pipeline.
“It is far too early to discuss this,” he said as per GPFans.
“We are working together, we have tonnes of races in a row over the last two or three months and I think we discuss together in the last part of the season, not before.
“Perhaps he is more aware than myself,” he added when asked about Ecclestone’s claim.
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Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi are the second longest-standing pairing on the grid after the Mercedes duo having been together since 2019.
There’s no guarantee as of yet that they’ll both remain in their seats for next season, with neither yet to be confirmed for beyond this year.
Vasseur, who says whether Raikkonen decides to retire or not is the main unknown, wants to keep things that way as he feels it pushes them to perform.
“To keep the system under pressure is always a good thing,” he said.
“I don’t want to commit for a long time, I don’t want to say ‘Okay guys, you can relax and blah blah’. We have to keep everybody under pressure.
“F1 is all about pressure and we have to keep it like this. We don’t know what could happen around us, in the junior series and in the top of the field and so on and we don’t want to take this kind of commitment today.
“We know the grid will be fulfilled by the top, Mr Wolff will make his own decision and then Mr Horner and then at one stage it will come to us.
“We are not in a rush to make this kind of decision but things are moving and for sure we have a question mark around Kimi, but Antonio is improving.”
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