What sneak preview tells us about Alfa's pragmatic refinement

As a Valentine's Day gift to its loyal fanbase - and, presumably, the Formula 1 media circus - Alfa Romeo capped an already launch-intensive day with a surprise reveal of the new C39 undergoing its shakedown at the Fiorano circuit.

Dressed in a snakeskin livery, the C39 also bore a number of key design changes over its predecessor. Although Alfa's subsequent press release waxed lyrical about the symbolism of a snake shedding its skin, thankfully it omitted any visual evidence of the car doing so at the end of its runs. This is F1, after all, not a David Attenborough documentary.

Perhaps Alfa loses brownie points for that, in a thinly veiled attempt to reap a bit more attention for the new Orlen stickers adorning the car, but gains them back immediately for shaping the front snorkel into the shape of the grille typically seen on Alfa Romeo's fleet of road-going vehicles.

Changing the shape of the snorkel probably has no real aerodynamic effect, but it's a neat little detail to talk about.

The nostrils are retained, and the resulting pathway onto a small cape - something Alfa added midway through last year - should add to the overall front-end downforce. The team has also stuck to its guns with the anhedral front wing design, although the car was shaken down with the full five-element arrangement similar to that which it used at the end last season.

For the majority of 2019, the car ran with the top two flaps fused together, but it has opted for a more conventional arrangement to its unconventional concept. The footplate developed partway through last year also remains, while the central seam down the middle to induce a further vortex ensures the front wing is worked even harder.

There's redefined suspension geometry at the front too, the steering arm moved level with the lower wishbone, while the upper wishbones are more neatly sculpted around the transition to the extended upright. And while the S-duct remains on top of the chassis bulkhead, the quartet of fins seen in that area on last year's C38 have not been carried over.

On the face of it, the Alfa Romeo doesn't seem to have changed a great deal, but detail touches suggest a strong overhaul on the C38 package

Looking at the bargeboards, there are some further notable changes. Last year, a smaller bargeboard preceded the main panel, with the boomerang almost mounted straight to the car's flanks, but the C39 has a marginally more conventional arrangement - if there's such a thing as a conventional bargeboard package these days. The pre-bargeboard is broken up into a handful of different elements, while the main panel and its upper serrations is a lot more similar to the Mercedes bargeboard design.

The team retains boomerangs for 2020, and these are mounted to a new set of turning vanes - which adds horizontally mounted elements into the mix to add further dimensions to the way the airflow shed from the tyres is cleaned up. The main vane is split into two, and like last year is broken away from the horizontal vane over the top of the inlet.

Around the floor, the numerous fins seen last year on the rear corners are kept in the C39's package to drive airflow around the rear tyres. Whether the team adds further complexities in this area remains to be seen, as it has experimented with floor additions previously.

Alfa is au fait with creating a tight sidepod design, and the packaging on the C39 is no different. Unlike its other Ferrari-powered counterparts on the F1 grid, the team likes to package some of its cooling components inside the engine cover. It's not quite as bulbous as last year, and Alfa has been able to create a slightly larger fin at the back than it could with last year's design. The split intake design has been abandoned, opting now for a triangular central inlet while retaining the rounder inlet further back.

The rear wing is not dissimilar to last year's design, retaining the inward-dangling strakes and the small flicks at the rear face to control how the vortices coming off the rear wing are produced. The T-wing used towards the end of 2019 remains, and the exhaust arrangement seen on the Haas and Ferrari cars is also included on the Alfa.

On the face of it, the Alfa Romeo doesn't seem to have changed a great deal, but detail touches suggest a strong overhaul on the C38 package. While last year's midfield battle was tight, Alfa was always there-or-thereabouts, especially once quasi-rookie Antonio Giovinazzi had got up to speed with the demands of F1 and began to give Kimi Raikkonen more of a concerted push.

Benefitting from continuity in the driver line-up, Alfa now has a year's experience under its current guise - after taking over from Sauber - and should be able to cater to Raikkonen and Giovinazzi's needs a little more adeptly.

But one thing that the team should be wary of is the tail-off in performance that it sustained in the second half of last season; just as 2018's performance improved by the end of the year, 2019's wound down considerably - save for an impressive double-points finish at the mad-cap Brazilian Grand Prix.

Whether the team has the resources to enact an ascent up the grid remains to be seen, but as a function of a stagnant ruleset the chances are that the midfield will close up even more. That could present Alfa with more opportunities for points, or it could hinder it if the team is unable to take advantage of situations akin to those seen in Brazil.

What the team needs is to continue to justify the Alfa Romeo moniker, and make the most of the Hinwil facilities to shake off the last vestiges of the days when it was mired at the back of the grid.

Under Frederic Vasseur's stewardship, Alfa has proven to be an effective and no-nonsense outfit, and that pragmatic approach must continue further if it is to have aspirations of making double points finishes a more regular occurrence.