Alfa Romeo on Tuesday became the fourth Formula 1 team on the grid to unveil its new colours for the 2023 Formula One season with the presentation of the C43 car of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou.

The Alfa Romeo F1 team presented its single-seater for the 2023 Formula 1 season live from Zurich, Switzerland, on Tuesday 7 February. The car will be driven by Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas and Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu.

Two-tone livery

The livery of the C43 is very different to that of last season’s car, with a two-tone bodywork incorporating the logo of the team’s new main partner, the Stake company. The new colour code is also used on the suits of the two drivers and the staff, with black being the dominant colour this year.

The livery, designed by Alfa Romeo’s Centro Stile, incorporates all of the team’s sponsors, with prominent locations for the Alfa Romeo brand, notably under the rear wing and the engine cover, as the Italian brand leaves Formula 1 at the end of the year.

As for the presentation itself, the Alfa Romeo team did present its car for the 2023 season, and not just the livery, albeit as computer renders only. The most important details have of course been hidden on this C43, but we can already notice the big work done by the engineers during the winter on the car’s pontoons.

Designed by the Jan Monchaux-led technical team and powered by a new Ferrari powertrain, the C43 is an evolution of last year’s C42 single-seater: however, due to the limited but significant rule changes introduced by the FIA, the C43 incorporates several upgrades and complete new parts, with its overall development path still promising a steep improvement curve.

Focus on reliability

The Alfa Romeo team focused on the reliability of its C43 over the winter after leaving many points on the table in 2022 due to retirements.

The Alfa Romeo team has been working on the reliability of its 2023 single-seater over the winter in order to avoid the same situation as last year, with many points left on the table due to several retirements during the season.

The 2023 car presented on Tuesday is an evolution of last year’s C42, as the technical director explained, but the technical team has put a lot of effort into ensuring that this C43 is not only fast but also very reliable.

“I am very proud of what we have achieved in the last few months, because creating a new car is always a huge effort on the part of the team,” said Jan Monchaux, Alfa Romeo’s technical director, at the presentation of the C43.

“This car is an evolution of last year’s, reflecting the new regulations and introducing major changes in areas where we found improvements were needed.”

“I obviously hope it will be faster than the car we had last year, because that’s what matters most in the end, but more reliable too: we’ve put a lot of effort into that.”

“Now it’s time to get out on track and see how this car performs. I’m happy to be back racing and I’m convinced there will be more to come soon.”

Equipped with a Ferrari engine, the reliability problems Alfa Romeo experienced last year were more to do with poor cooling of the power unit and so it is this area that the engineers have been working on as a priority this winter.

The C43 will hit the track this week in Barcelona, Spain for a shakedown before heading to Bahrain for winter testing.

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You will find all the presentation dates in the table below