Alfa Romeo explains its drop in performance after a good start to the season

Director of Track Engineering, Xevi Pujolar explained the drop in speed of Alfa Romeo compared to the start of the season.

Published on 13/08/2022 à 18:53

Gonzalo Forbes

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Alfa Romeo explains its drop in performance after a good start to the season

After a good start to the season, Alfa Romeo experienced a decline. ©DPPI/A. Vincent

Introduced for this 2022 season, the new technical regulations have caused the weight of the single-seaters on the grid to explode. While some stables struggled to be within the optimal 800 kilo window, Alfa Romeo for her part was the one who had managed the transition best with a C42 weighing 798 kilos at the time of the initial weigh-in.

On the track, the car of the Hinwil factories (Switzerland) showed a good face from its first laps allowing Valtteri Bottas et Guanyu-Zhou to quickly score points. But that was before. Since then, the other teams in the field have introduced various improvements and reduced the weight of their cars, thus narrowing the gaps, particularly in the middle of the pack where Alfa Romeo is located. A few months later, the Swiss structure no longer enjoys this advantage and seems to suffer a little more against its opponents.

« I think some teams, with their improvements in aerodynamic performance, have been able to reduce weight (of their cars), underlines Xevi Pujolar. For our part, this is a point with which we were satisfied at the start of the season while other teams in the middle of the pack, and even at the top, still had a gain to go for. So we were quite successful at the start because we already had the weight advantage »

Despite some recent complicated outings for Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou, as well as a drop in performance, Alfa Romeo is not losing hope for the future. The team commanded by Frédéric Vasseur, who recently installed new improvements on Bottas' single-seater, will arrive in Belgium with two C42s carrying the latest developments in the hope of regaining the good form seen at the start of the season.

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Gonzalo Forbes

In charge of promotion formulas (F2, F3, FRECA, F4...). Carried by the grace of Franco Colapinto.

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