Alfa Romeo was praised at its livery launch earlier this week for not merely dressing up a 2022 show car in the revised 2023 team’s livery.
However, is mistake with the visuals meant the C43 was visible on the screen behind the presenters long before the cover was dramatically removed form the car at the physical reveal.
Alfa Romeo took car leaking game to a whole new level. pic.twitter.com/XwO9E1TH40
— ً (@tsimiks) February 7, 2023
Shortest ever preseason F1 testing
The 2023 pre-season test will be the shortest ever in F1 history as the drivers share just 3 days track time the week before the F1 opener in Bahrain.
As always the teams are gaming the system to get a shakedown before Bahrain by using one of their ‘filming’ days to get some time on track before Bahrain.
This will allow the engineers to do some systems checks in a real life setting together with the drivers getting a small amount of feel for the car.
‘Filming’ days being utilised as shakedowns
The teams are restricted on filming days to just 100kmh and today Alfa Romeo have their C43 on track for the first time.
Valterri Bottas who is entering his 11th F1 season will take the first stint and his team mate Zhou Guanyu will take over for the afternoon.
The Alfa Romeo car launch did reveal significant changes in architecture – particularly at the rear – from its predecessor.
The Swiss based outfit had one of the shortest wheel based F1 cars in 2022 and the weight advantage was clear in the early part of the campaign as the Alfa Romeo outperformed its usual rivals.
Big design fault in 2022 car hampered development
However, the design of the radiators hampered a necessary big in season development and Alfa fell back in the pecking order.
The problem was the design was not delivering the air properly to the diffuser and as the season wore on, Alfa Romeo’s subsequent relative lack downforce was exposed.
New solution more Ferrari-esque
Technical Director, Jan Monchaux, explains, ”[we] had to acknowledge that there were a better solution in how to manage the flow to the diffuser and the flow going to the rear tyres but because of the decision we had made [in 2022] on an architectural point of view.”
“[mid season last year] we were stuck in a corner, so we effectively have been doing the changes [for this year].”
“This then opened the door to quite a change for us in terms of bodywork and how we handled the hot air coming from the radiators compared to last years car.
So it is not a revolution but a similar solution we saw on the grid already last year but it was something we could not implement without a major change of the architecture [during the season].”
READ MORE: Haas and Honda 2026
Your first look at #F1 2023 on track. ♥️ #GetCloser pic.twitter.com/P3oMh0xtqk
— Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake (@alfaromeof1) February 10, 2023
