Season Debrief: Alfa Romeo's season to forget

 

Alfa Romeo took a fall from a P6 finish in the constructers in 2022, their best in a decade, to a drop down to P9 in 2023. The C43 only managing to bring in 16 points for the team, 10 scored by Valtteri Bottas, with the remaining 6 coming from Guanyu Zhou.

 

Image: motorsport.com

Like many teams across the grid, Alfa Romeo brought upgrades to their car at the British Grand Prix. Updates were brought to the floor, diffuser, and rear suspension. While other teams, such as McLaren, looked to have flourished and changed their fate with the enw upgrades, Alfa Romeo had the opposite results with both drivers finishing outside the points, Bottas in P12 and Zhou in P15.

 

AlphaTauri remained Alfa Romeos top competitor is 2023, while AlphaTauri had a turbulent season starting from P10 in the constructors, they were able to regain composure and overtake Alfa Romeo following the Mexican Grand Prix to finish P8 in the Constructors. Alfa Romeo’s luck continued to grow from bad to worse with a double DNF in Brazil.

 

The decision was made at the end of 2022, to keep Zhou on for another season with the team, this would be the right decision, allowing the team to reduce costs by minimising crashes and damage to the C43.

Image: motorsport.com

Over the season, it was Bottas to outperform his teammate over the season, the Fin scoring 10 of the 6 points for the team. Bottas failed to finish beyond P8, his highest finish of the season which he would take in Bahrain, before repeating again in Qatar. Zhou only managed to muster up a top finish of P9 for the season, which her would replicate on three occasions in Australia, Spain and Qatar, his only points finishes for the season. in 22 races, Alfa Romeo achieved only 7 Q3 appearances, and 7 points finishes for the team, with 6 DNF’s over the course of the year.

 

Alfa Romeo’s final season as Sauber’s title sponsor, was one to forget, the team will be rebranded to Stake for the 2024 season. Team representative, Alessandro Alunni Bravi, emphasised that the 2024 season will be a complete fresh start for the team, stating “The car next year will not be an evolution of this year’s car, because we think that there are some limits in this concepts that we cannot exploit further”

 

“We will have a completely new car from chassis to suspension, everything”