Alfa Romeo has taken the covers off its C43 during a launch event in Zürich on Tuesday.
Alfa Romeo heads into 2023 off the back of its best Formula 1 finish in nine years and has signed a new title partnership with Stake.
Despite regressing through the course of the 2022 campaign its early results proved sufficient for the team to net sixth place in the standings, finishing in front of Aston Martin on countback.
Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu will continue to form Alfa Romeo’s Formula 1 driver line-up.
Both joined the team in 2022, with Bottas switching from Mercedes, while Zhou stepped up from Formula 2 to become China’s first Formula 1 racer.
Last year’s Formula 2 runner-up Théo Pourchaire will take on the role of reserve driver, replacing Robert Kubica.
Pourchaire, 19, will dovetail his reserve driver duties with a third campaign in Formula 2.
The outfit has also undergone managerial changes during the off-season following Frederic Vasseur’s departure to Ferrari.
Andreas Seidl joined from McLaren as Sauber Group’s new CEO while Alessandro Alunni Bravi will act as its Team Representative in the Formula 1 paddock.
Alunni Bravi has been part of Sauber Group since 2017 as a member of the Board and its General Counsel.
“We don’t want to fix targets – it’s always difficult ahead of the season to know where we’re going to stand,” said Alunni Bravi.
“What we want to do is continue our growth, address the weaknesses, and improve the team in all areas.”
Jan Monchaux has continued as Alfa Romeo’s Technical Director.
“We concentrated mainly on the rear part of the car, where we just wanted to be brave enough to do the next step in terms of pure development, which opened the door to solutions we couldn’t implement last year,” said Monchaux.
“We had reliability issues last year, so there’s a lot of things we changed on the car, but also internally in terms of processes to address that topic, as historically we have been strong there but last year we lost a bit there.”
The C43 is due to be shaken down in Barcelona shortly ahead of the sole pre-season test in Bahrain.
It is set to be the last year of the team’s branding as Alfa Romeo.
Alfa Romeo took on naming rights of Sauber’s Formula 1 outfit in 2019 but the partnership is set to cease after 2023 in anticipation of Audi’s arrival from 2026.
Ferrari continues as Alfa Romeo’s power unit supplier in 2023 – a role it will hold until Audi’s entry in 2026.
Discussion about this post