Alfa Romeo have announced that they will unveil their 2022 challenger on 27 February, two days after it is given its “shakedown” in Barcelona.
The Swiss team had a largely disappointing season last year, slumping to ninth in the Constructors’ Championship as Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi extracted six points finishes between them from the car.
The pair have now departed the team and have been replaced by rookie Guanyu Zhou and former Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas.
The Finn claimed 10 race wins during his five years at the serial constructors’ champions, helping them to five of their record eight teams’ successes.
READ: Alfa Romeo looking to use Leclerc as model for Bottas
Zhou claimed four race wins in Formula 2 last season en route to a third-placed championship finish, and this is the first time in Bottas’ career that he will be working with a younger team-mate.
He is looking forward to helping in the young Chinese driver’s development.
“Of course I try to help my teammate. We have to work as a team. I hope this will bring us a lot of points and good results,” he recently told Formula Passion.
The 32-year-old has already worked with team principal Frederic Vasseur during his title-winning GP3 season in 2011 with ART, and is keen to rekindle his relationship with the experienced Frenchman.
“I would say 50 percent of the decision [to join Alfa Romeo] was because of Fred and knowing him from the past and knowing what I feel like he’s capable of doing with the team,” he said in conversation with The Race.
Vasseur also teamed up with now-Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc during the Monegasque’s own GP3 success in 2016 before welcoming him into the Sauber team in 2018, and the 53-year-old reckons that integrating a driver is easier when one has already worked with them.
“I saw it with Charles in the past: when you work together in the junior series, you know the guy for a long, long time. You don’t need to speak too much to understand what he is expecting,” he said in conversation with Motorsport.com.
The test in Barcelona will not be open to the public, and has thus been dubbed a “shakedown.”
The Swiss team are to reveal their 2022 challenger two days after the completion of the pre-season event in Spain, before heading to Bahrain on10 March for the second and final test.
The first race of the season will take place at the Sakhir International Circuit on 20 March.
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