The director of the Alfa Romeo team explains why the team is much weaker than the previous season
Alfa Romeo finished the 2022 season in sixth place in the constructor's standings, while the team is currently ninth this year with over three times fewer points. Alessandro Alunni Bravi, the team director, has detailed the reasons for the loss of pace of his team.
16 points have been scored this season, ten thanks to Valterri Bottas and four with Zhou Guanyu. With a ninth place in the constructor rankings, and only two Grand Prix remaining in the championship, Alfa Romeo has clearly regressed compared to last year. In 2022, the team based in Hinwil, Switzerland finished in sixth place in the constructor standings, with 55 points, the same as Aston Martin, but with a fifth place finish achieved at Imola thanks to Bottas, as their best result of the season. The Finnish driver had scored 49 points that year, and his rookie teammate had earned six points.
This drop in the rankings can be explained by the progress of Aston Martin and Williams, seventh and tenth in the constructor standings in 2022, but also because the Italo-Swiss team had reached its limits in the previous season, as recognized by Allessandro Alunni Bravi, the executive director of the team in an exclusive interview with the German website auto motor und sport. “We are in a different season. We cannot compare 2022 to 2023 for various reasons,” explained the director of Alfa Romeo F1 Team.
« Our goal remains 7th place »
Most of the teams in the lower half of the grid sacrificed 2021 to fully embrace the new regulations. In the first six races of 2022, we scored 90% of our points. We took advantage of the fact that other teams struggled with the new aerodynamics. If you remember the early races, we were sometimes even ahead of Mercedes. Ahead of Alpine and McLaren. It was a snapshot in time. Teams like Mercedes were able to solve the issues and return to their usual position. If we face reality: in the second half of the season, starting from June, we were consistently between eighth and tenth place. We exhausted our points cushion. In the last three races, we were able to stay ahead of Aston Martin. Because we had already introduced a new package in Austin and Suzuka: underfloor, nose, front wing. This gave us more performance, recalls Allessandro Alunni Bravi.
« We have just crossed the finish line in front of Aston Martin. Our true position was therefore somewhere between seventh and tenth place. And that is exactly the battle we are currently in. This season shows us a completely different world championship. Aston Martin, of course, has taken a big step forward. Other teams have shown more performance than usual. We are fighting with Williams, Haas, and AlphaTauri. Our goal remains seventh place in the World Championship. The competition has set the bar higher. There are teams who unfortunately managed to take a bigger step than us this winter », continued the Italian.
