09/02/2023
NEWS STORY
The reveal out of the way, Alfa Romeo technical director, Jan Monchaux can't wait to get the C43 on track, though he admits that this is a nerve-wracking phase of the new car's life.
"First of all, during the winter test, we want to be on the track at all times, not spending our time in the garage with some stupid small mistakes or issues that prevent us from running," he told the media at today's reveal of the Swiss outfit's 2023 contender.
"So it's not nice to be in my shoes right now," added the former Toyota (F1) and Audi aero man, "because everything could be good, and the next minute you have another issue to tackle and to sort.
"So I'll be glad when we are in Barcelona, and the car is running, and hopefully running smoothly, so that we can get into serious work."
Speaking at the launch, Valtteri Bottas confirmed that "high-speed load and balance" was just one of the problems encountered with the C2 last season, this together with porpoising and cooling issues.
"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," admits Monchaux. "Especially on the bodywork side, which was not possible last year, because we had a quite extreme cooler arrangement.
"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.
"We had four DNFs based on four different issues on the cooling systems," he adds. "It's not like four times we repeated the same problem.
"We identified the root cause, and we are confident that this is behind us. And we also aim, because it's one of our biggest priorities, to return in terms of reliability to where Sauber was in the years before, when we were among the best. So lessons learned."
However, not all the problems of 2022 were of the Swiss team's making.
"Reliability is very big on our list, and we also hope and are generally quite confident that our friends from Maranello will also have done a big step, because it hampered us. We had eight DNFs, we had four or five penalties also because of PU elements. So it's eight races which you throw away, plus four or five easy where you start more or less from the back."
Another problem was tyres, which for the D42 appeared to be track specific.
"Certainly on the softest compound we have work to do," admits Monchaux, "and I hope we'll be able to raise our games there also. We just need to be better prepared and do a better job as a team. The other teams that finished ahead of us are showing that it's possible.
"So we analysed weaknesses we have, which are not necessarily related to the pure base of the car, but also how we operate a car and how we operate as a team at the track.
"And in the support being given by the ops room during the weekend, and the simulator, there are another few steps to be done, which I hope we will have time for in the '23 season."
The Frenchman also admits frustration at the late change to the rules surrounding the floors in a bid to counter porpoising, which he believes could ultimately favour the bigger teams.
"We like change, it's always a new opportunity when rules are changing," he said. "But we were slightly irritated by the timing because it was decided very late, and usually late changes are favouring bigger outfits.
"The changes are mainly on the floor side, the FIA decided to lift the edges by 15 millimetres. It doesn't sound a lot, 15mm, but that was enough to keep us scratching our head and having to redo all the floor and rear end of the car alongside those new rules. So far, I'm pretty happy about the progress we did.
"The rule change, I think the order of magnitude, let's call it half a second lap time loss, which I will assume is more or less plus or minus a tenth everywhere. And I have no doubt that most of the teams will have recovered those losses. Then it's a matter of how much more have you been able to put on to the car for the start of the season.
"We started very strong last year and at some point struggled a bit more to also bring performance to the car. It's going to be a 23-race season and if there's one thing we also learned last year it's that the season is not over until the last lap in Abu Dhabi because it's the last lap where we finished P6, with half a second ahead of Vettel.
"We had our highs, we had downs," he concludes, "but we need to also, as a team, and this I think was very clear from all the reviews we've been doing, that we can't give up.
"Race one will be what it is... maybe it will be very good, maybe we'll be a bit disappointed... ok, turn the page, there's still 22 races and I have no doubt that these guys, but also the team at home, 500 people or so, will be will be pushing very hard to then recover what needs to be recovered if it is or build an advantage, if we would be in the higher parts of the midfield."
Check out our C43 gallery, here.