By Lucrezia Costa
The Swiss team was the first to unveil their real challenger for the upcoming 2023 season, unlike Red Bull and Williams who instead had chosen to show their new liveries on showcars.
The presentation started with the introduction of new F1 Team Representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi and the new Technical Director Jan Monchaux in front of the newly announced Sauber CEO Andreas Seidl.
“I am very proud of what we have achieved over these last months, because creating a new car is alwasy a masive effort from the team.”
The new regulations introduced in 2022 brought an overall successfull year ending the season in sixth place with 55 points, for Alfa Romeo’s best result in ten years. Goal for 2023 is to further improve the speed and the reliability:
“I hope it’s going to be quicker than the succesful car we had last yearr, that’s what matters most, and more reliable as well. We have put a lot of effort in this direction, and now it’s time to get to the track and see how this car performs.”
“I’m happy to get back to racing and I’m confident there will be much more to come from us soon.”
Mochaux cited among the areas that were improved the most in comparision to the C42 the chassis, the gearbox case, in order to allow more “flexibility”, and the rear of the car, alongside the forced intervention on the floor of the car following the porpoising issues of the last year.
Picture credits: Sauber Group
“The rear end is certainly where we spent most effort, most time to make up ground for us, in terms of topology of the rear and opening the door to further development.”
In spite of the fact that most of the car is carrying over from 2022, the team decided to work in a different direction on the cooling system and other large areas that couldn’t be improved during last season:
“Especially on the bodywork side, which was not possible last year, because we had a quite extreme cooler arrangement. And we can’t change coolers during the season, so we had to do significant effort on the rear end to accommodate different cooler arrangements, and therefore different bodywork, which for us was a step forward.”
The Technical Director admits that the C43 has been strongly influenced by the championship winning concept introduced last year by Red Bull in the team’s second year of designing and introducing their own gearboxes after having been supplied by Ferrari for so long. Monchaux is very pleased by the fact that the team is finally able to pursue the new direction:
“Which you can see,” he notes. “I mean, it’s quite obvious, but for us, it wouldn’t have been possible last year. Even if we had said we wanted it, we couldn’t make it, because coolers were so extreme, and the rear suspension wouldn’t have allowed that.”
The car unveiling saw drivers Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu themselves uncovering their car, whose livery is rather different to last years’, featuring black and red as the most prominent colors and the Italian flag on the rear wing.
The drivers were later joined by Alfa Romeo’s new reserve driver Theo Pourchaire to discuss their feelings about the new challenger and the goals they hope to achieve in 2023.
