With an increased budget, Alfa Romeo will bring more updates to its F1 car in 2023
Avoiding a decrease in pace and a decline in the hierarchy this new season is what the Swiss team is determined to avoid at all costs, and this involves a greater number of improvements.
After a disappointing 2021 season and a total of only 13 points earned, resulting in a meager 9th place in the constructor’s standings, Alfa Romeo F1 Team made a fresh start last year with the new regulations and a completely new driver lineup: the experienced and liberated from Mercedes, Valterri Bottas, as well as the rookie from Formula 2, Guanyu Zhou.
2022 started off in the best way possible with a well-designed car and the only single-seater to have managed to reach the minimum weight. This resulted in a double points finish in the very first race. In total, it has been a successful start to the season with 51 points scored in nine rounds.
Silverstone, turning point for Alfa Romeo.
From Silverstone, the team will be nothing more than a shadow of its former self until the end of the 22 races of the season, with only 4 small points earned – the lowest total among all teams.
The change in the hierarchical order occurred before the summer break, coinciding with teams saving weight, while Alfa Romeo had to add weight due to the increased minimum weight set by the FIA. The more frequent update packages from competitors also played a role, according to Alfa Romeo’s Head of Ground Engineering, Xevi Pujolar, which in his opinion meant that the team seemed to be regressing.
« I think we were developing at the same pace, but we weren’t able to produce at the same pace. And that’s what we’ve seen, our developments came a little later,” he said.
Of course, now our goal for next season is to try to bring or accelerate in that direction, to be more aligned with the competition.
Because if we could have these developments a little earlier, we could certainly benefit from them for more races, and it will be better for our fight for the championship.
Bottas notably discusses reliability.
Finally, the Swiss team managed to maintain a sixth place, the first in ten years for the organization. A slight improvement in performance was observed towards the end of the season, notably with Valterri Bottas securing sixth place in qualifying in Mexico. To explain this, the Finnish driver stated that the team’s resources were the reason for the low production rate compared to its rivals.
“It is a fact that one of our weaknesses was the speed at which improvements were made,” commented the person concerned.
« It was mostly due to production, simply because there was not enough manpower to produce the parts. While some other teams, like Mercedes for example, currently have definitely more people and more power to produce things more quickly.
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« And also, all the reliability issues we had, a large part of the attention and energy was focused on resolving them instead of trying to develop the car. So, it distracted us a bit in the middle of the year.
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Now that we have reliability, let’s say, at a good level, we can once again focus solely on performance.
Alfa Romeo, thanks to its 6th place among constructors, will reach a budget close to that of the top team in 2023. This position should allow Alfa Romeo 2023 to compete for a longer period in the season and perhaps progress more quickly.
