Welcome Drivers!

This post is a continuation of the Constructor Deep Dive series we are currently working through. If you haven’t already, check out the deep dives that we have already done below.

• Williams Racing (Link)

• AlphaTauri (Link)

• Haas (Link)

• Aston Martin (Link)

Next on the list is Alfa Romeo, who finished 6th in the Constructors championship in 2022.

2022 Performance

Alfa Romeo got out to a strong start to the 2022 season. They scored 51 points in the first half of the season. Unfortunately, their season was marred by reliability issues and inconsistent performances. Alfa Romeo had at least one driver DNF in 10 races this season. In the second half of the season, they were only able to score 4 points.

Valtteri Bottas, in his first year away from Mercedes, had an impressive start to the year. He scored 46 points in the first 9 races of the season. After that impressive start, he had more DNFs than points to finish the season. Outside of the frequent reliability issues, Bottas had a great season and will be looking to improve in 2023.

Zhou Guanyu had an okay rookie season in F1. He was only able to score 6 points on the year but had 5 DNFs and had to take a number of engine penalties. The team was satisfied with his performance, but he will be expected to convert more point scoring opportunities in the future.

Looking Ahead to 2023

Leadership, Management & Partnerships

Fred Vasseur, Alfa's 2022 team principal, departed for the opening at Ferrari and Alfa has elected not to replace him. They will instead be going with a 3-man management structure. We firmly believe that this is not an optimal strategy for any F1 team. Someone needs to be able to have the final say so there is no debate over what the best route is to take. If management does not agree with each other, it will be difficult to convince the team they are moving in the right direction.

It does appear that Alfa Romeo has appointed someone to the team principal position. This man is Alessandro Alunni Bravi, although he will be known as a “team representative” for Alfa. Alunni Bravi will be working directly with Andreas Seidl, CEO of Sauber group, who oversees the whole organization. Alunni Bravi will be more hands on with the team while Seidl will primarily be working on preparing for Audi’s arrival.

This will be Alfa Romeo’s last year in F1. The Sauber run team will be pairing up with Audi in 2026 for the new regulations. Alfa has a new title sponsor this season in Stake, although the Stake logo will not be shown on the livery every race this season. Certain countries had bans on gambling advertisement so Alfa will not be able to have Stake shown on their car. When the logo can’t be shown, it will be replaced by the streaming service brand Kick.

Development

Alfa Romeo revealed the C43 on February 7th, and it had some interesting designs, all of which may or may not be on the real C43. On top of the new color combination of red and black, they revealed a unique floor design with a serated edge and a vertical flap for airflow. Something like that had not been seen before and many question it legality although it does seem to follow all regulation.

A few days later, Alfa had their shakedown, and they ran a completely different floor that was more traditional to what you would see on F1 cars. It is likely the show car floor was just for show and what you see in the shakedown video is the actual floor they will run this season.

Other than the changes to the floor, Alfa also made changes to their side pods and reworked their rear suspension. Similar to many other teams, Alfa’s new side pods share a lot of characteristics of Red Bull’s 2022 car. They had to rearrange some internal components to achieve this as they believe last year’s car had plateaued performance. This new style will hopefully have a higher performance ceiling.

Part of the changes revolve around cooling route to optimize airflow between the rear tires. It likely involved changing how the radiator area was distributed within the car. Alfa was adamant that the sidepods would not have been possible with last year’s arrangement.

These upgrades are all for naught if Alfa can’t get on top of their reliability issues. They need to be able to finish races on a more consistent clip. They may have a bigger issue if it is Ferrari’s engine that needs to be fixed and not something that they can control.

Drivers

Alfa Romeo is bringing back both of their drivers from the previous season. Both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu are looking to improve in 2023. They both lamented the reliability of their car last year and are hopeful the new one doesn’t suffer from the same problems.

Bottas was remarkable in the beginning of last season. He scored points in 6 of the first 7 races. He will need to maintain this form in 2023 if Alfa wants to remain competitive in the midfield. With his teammate still unproven he will need to be the leader and give the bulk of the feedback on vehicle performance. He has shown he is talented even when he not driving a Mercedes. We think Bottas will have continued success in 2023.

Zhou had a good season that could’ve been much better had his car been more reliable. He was not on the same level as Bottas but that was expected since he was a rookie last year. He will need to put himself in point scoring positions consistently. There was a considerable gap between him and Bottas last year so he will need to work to close that now that he has some experience under his belt.

2023 Predictions

We think Alfa Romeo will stay exactly where they are in P6. The highest we see Alfa going is to P5. We expect them to be a solid team with multiple point scoring opportunities, but we also expect other teams to run the midfield. We think it is more likely that Aston Martin and Haas could have better seasons than Alfa this year.

Overall, if Alfa wants to be competitive at the top of the midfielf they will need to improve their reliability. Zhou will also have to match the caliber of Bottas so that they will be able to score as many points as possible.

Upcoming Posts and Reader Feedback

Our next post will be a continuation of the deep dives into each team for their 2023 outlook. We will try to get out one a day considering we have limited time before the pre-season testing starts in late February.

If you like the post, please subscribe to the newsletter. We try to publish 2-3 articles a week and will be doing in-depth breakdowns as the season gets going. Feel free to leave any comments or recommendations on topics you would like to be covered. Thanks for reading!