Alfa Romeo ready to fight McLaren for 4th place

Swiss sources close to Alfa Romeo write that on the basis of the team in Hinwil a meeting was held with the participation of the management and owners, the task of which was not only to remain in 5th place in the constructors’ championship, but also to try to climb one line higher.

After five stages of the season, the team has 31 points, while McLaren has 46, and in theory, if you are lucky, Alfa Romeo will be able to overtake that, but provided that not only Valtteri Bottas, but also Guanyu Zhou will be in the finish in the top ten. So far, the Chinese debutant has not had much luck as he finished 11th in Saudi Arabia and Australia and retired after six laps of the race due to technical issues in Miami.

The team is counting on the technical innovations that will be presented in Barcelona, ​​which will increase the efficiency of the already good C42 chassis. This is borne out by the fact that Bottas made it to the qualifying final in four of the five stages and started in Miami from a very worthy 5th position, although he couldn’t stay there.

“The car works well. In terms of chassis efficiency, it was the first time in Miami that we tuned the C42 for such a high level of downforce, and everything was fine,” Hevy Pujolar, Alfa Romeo’s chief race engineer, quoted The Race . – Therefore, we are more or less confident that the novelties being prepared for the Spanish podium will allow us to take a noticeable step forward. We are looking forward to good results again, so the team is in a positive mood.”

Frédéric Wasser is more realistic about the outlook, also because all teams will have budget problems this season.

“So far we can say that we have made a huge step forward,” said the head of the Alfa Romeo F1 Team. – We have set ourselves the task of regularly reaching the final of qualifying, if we are talking about Valtteri, and to the second session in the case of Zhou. I believe we have completed this task.

But at the same time, it is very difficult to predict how the situation will develop during the season, as everyone is expected to have problems related to the budget, albeit of a different nature. It will be difficult for top teams to stay within the frame, and speaking of us, we will have to slow down the pace of modernization during the season and possibly switch to preparing for next year at some point.

But so far so good. I would say that in terms of results and the mood of the team, everything is just perfect, the engine has become noticeably more efficient and we perform successfully on different types of tracks, in different weather conditions, etc. It seems that our car is cornering slowly well, so we can expect to be competitive in both Barcelona and Monaco.”

Team budgets have been capped at $140 million this season, and Vasseur estimates Alfa Romeo is literally “a few million” short of that ceiling. But a confident start to the season and the speed of the car let us hope the team can withstand its direct rivals, including Alpine F1 and AlphaTauri in addition to McLaren.