Alfa Romeo announces launch date for 2023 Formula 1 car
Alfa Romeo has become the latest team to announce its launch plans, with its new Formula 1 car to be unveiled on 7 February.
The Sauber-run squad, which is embarking on its last season under the moniker of the Italian car manufacturer ahead of its tie up with Audi for 2026, plans to reveal its C43 in Zurich on that day.
The launch will then likely be followed soon after by a filming day at Barcelona to iron out any early teething problems before the only pre-season test takes place in Bahrain from 23 February.
Alfa Romeo made some encouraging progress last year, as both Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou produced some very strong performances – especially in the opening phase of the campaign.
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However, poor reliability throughout the season compromised its chances of scoring better points and it eventually finished sixth in the constructors’ championship – tied with Aston Martin but taking the place on to countback.
Bottas and Zhou have been retained for the 2023 season but the squad will have changes elsewhere, with team principal Fred Vasseur having left to join Ferrari as replacement for Mattia Binotto.
No new boss has yet been announced, but it was revealed over the winter that former McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl was joining the parent Sauber company as its new CEO ahead of its transition to Audi.
The team is well aware of the areas that it needs to improve this season, with the second-half slump of 2022 something that has highlighted weaknesses within the organisation.
Speaking over the winter, Bottas felt that, as well as improving its reliability, Alfa Romeo needed to lift its rate of car development if it was to stay competitive in the midfield.
"It's a fact one of our weaknesses was the speed of bringing the upgrades," Bottas told Autosport.
"That was quite a lot down to production, just not having enough human power to produce the parts.
"While some other teams, for example Mercedes, at this moment, they definitely have more people and more power to produce things quicker.
"And also all the reliability issues we had, a lot of the focus and energy was focused on trying to fix those instead of trying to develop the car.
"So that distracted us quite a bit in the middle part of the year.
"Now that we've got the reliability, let's say, at a good level, we again can just purely focus on the performance."
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