by For the last time, the Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team has removed the covers from its 2023 car, unveiling the Stake-badged C43 in an online launch.
Alfa Romeo partnered with Sauber in 2019, the Italian automaker joined forces with the Hinwil-based team in a title partnership deal.
But with Audi arriving in 2026, with the German manufacturer having already acquired a 25% stake in the team, Alfa Romeo is pulling out at the end of this season.
This year’s C43 is therefore the last car to bear the Alfa Romeo branding along with its dark red and black livery.
Although Alfa Romeo was the fourth team to launch the 2023 season after Haas, Red Bull and Williams, unlike the other teams, revealed not only their colors for the season but also the car.
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Technical director Jan Monchaux said: “The project started a couple of weeks after last year’s launch, when we started drawing up the strategy for 2023.
“We identified the areas where we need to go wild and focused mainly on the rear of the car where we wanted to be brave enough to take the next step which opened the door to other solutions that we couldn’t implement last year.
“There are also many things that we have changed on the machine and also internally in our processes. It’s clearly a major focus for us this past winter.”
#F1 fans 🤝 @alfaromeof1 C43 #Approach pic.twitter.com/xqqFvNHYUV
— Participation of the Alfa Romeo F1 team (@alfaromeof1) February 7, 2023
Given the stability in the regulations, this year’s C43 is an evolution of last season’s Alfa Romeo save for a few tweaks involving mirror sizes and roll hopes.
However, the biggest change is on the floors with the FIA stepping in last season in a bid to keep porpoising to a minimum. This meant that this year the teams had to raise the floor edges by 15mm, the height of the diffuser throat was increased and the stiffness of the diffuser edge was increased.
“Slightly irritated by the timing which usually favors larger suits,” admitted Monchaux.
“The changes mainly concern the side of the floor, 15mm floor edges. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to make us scratch our heads and have to do the whole floor and rear of the car. I’m quite happy with the progress we’ve made.”
The car will be driven by Valtteri Bottas and Zhou GuanyuAlfa Romeo maintains the same line-up for the second season running with new teammates taking home sixth place last season when they held off Aston Martin in the season finale.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, newly appointed team representative, does not set goals for 2023.
“We don’t want to set goals, it’s always difficult to know where we are, where our competitors are,” said the Italian.
“We want to improve in all areas. We are not talking about a single goal but we want to be more consistent”.
There is, however, one big change with former team boss Fred Vasseur moving to Ferrari in the off-season with Sauber signing McLaren’s Andreas Seidl as the new Group CEO.
He will be assisted by Alessandro Alumna Bravi, who will be the Alfa Romeo team representative on the grand prix weekends.
This allows Seidl to focus on the upcoming partnership with Audi.
The C43 will officially make its track debut on 23 February when the teams descend on the Bahrain International Circuit for the start of three days of pre-season testing.
The team will conduct a shakedown in Spain later this week.
