It is currently an exciting time to be a part of Alfa Romeo, as the team are looking to finish their time in Formula 1 strongly before Sauber are taken over by Audi in 2026.
The 2022 season was a real ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ year for the team, with their impressive start being cancelled out by their poor finish.
Valtteri Bottas came flying out of the blocks at the start of the season, with a P6 finish in Bahrain, P5 at Imola and P6 in Spain, amongst a whole host of impressive point scoring performances.
Unfortunately for Alfa Romeo, they were simply out developed by the teams around them, leaving them struggling to score towards the end of the year.
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The team also experienced severe reliability issues which saw Bottas and his rookie teammate Guangyu Zhou retire from a combined 11 races.
Alfa Romeo did manage to hold on to sixth place in the constructors’ championship, level on points with Aston Martin but with a higher best race result that their rivals.
Looking to go one step further in 2023 and be consistent point scorers, Alfa Romeo’s technical director Jan Monchaux has expressed his confidence in his team’s ability to have fixed their reliability woes during the off-season.
“We spent a lot of effort and working hours to improve our processes internally mainly on the cooler side where we had a weakness last year, at least in the first part of the season,” he explained.
“And, touch wood, I don‘t have any here, but I am very confident we have left these issues behind us.”
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Both Bottas and Zhou will be looking to impress this season, as both drivers would ideally like to stay around and be a part of the extremely exciting Audi projects.
Zhou was unlucky not to impress last season, as he struggled to adapt to F1 at the start of the season when Alfa Romeo were competitive, before finding his form towards the end of the year when the car was barely capable of scoring points.
Both drivers will hope to have their futures confirmed fairly early into the new season, allowing them to focus on their driving without worrying about their next move.