How the last Sauber-built Alfa offers F1 2023 evolution clues

Let’s consider Alfa Romeo’s unveiling of its C43 Formula 1 car the true kick-off to 2023’s launch season, shall we? Haas and Williams were at least up-front with their livery launches, but certain others opted for a nebulous “season launch” only to expose last year’s car with the same paint job.

Alfa’s got a new car and a new livery. The Alfa Romeo name may subside from the grid for next season as Audi’s journey with Sauber continues to escalate, and so this writer was hoping for the most on-brand livery yet after finally getting good last season. Thankfully, it’s delivered on that front, and committing to the metallic red with a carbon black scheme looks effortlessly classy. But we’re not here to talk about cosmetic features, or new title sponsorship deals. There’s more at Stake than that.

With any launch car, the usual terms and conditions apply. Teams hide key details all the time to deny their rivals a chance to try ideas in the windtunnel early on, or just kick last year’s car out and try to pull the wool over our eyes. It was particularly prevalent last season, when certain teams “launched” the F1 concept design and passed it off as their own cooking. Not the delightfully devilish japes you’d hope for in launch season.

And sure, Alfa’s C43 won’t be the final car, but the team has form for actually showing something representative in its renders and so one feels emboldened to point out a few new things visible. Plus, there’s new components and assemblies under the hood as the Swiss squad hopes to iron out the key issues it faced with its C42; early reliability issues had to be chased largely at the expense of performance throughout 2022, but the team has a new gearbox to alleviate some of those concerns.

Technical director Jan Monchaux says that the new car is an evolution of the old and, despite the variable development curve of last year’s car, the team sees more potential in the concept. It just required a debugging process as interrupted run-plans throughout testing plagued the early season, and the team will hope the 2023 model won’t produce bumps in the road so soon.

Perhaps the article of most interest, given Alfa’s unwitting effect on the rules around it following Zhou Guanyu’s crash at Silverstone last year, concerns the rollhoop. The team returned to a bladed rollhoop last season after a couple of years with a triangular roll structure, but Zhou’s crash mandated a few changes to it following its separation from the survival cell.

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Alfa will persist with the blade in 2023 but has revised the design, ensuring that it complies with the rules and does not have any sharp edges that can dig into the ground should the car flip upside down.

Alfa Romeo has kept faith with its blade airbox on the C43, while making revisions to the floor and sidepod

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

The air intakes themselves have been rearranged and resemble a design used on Alfa Romeo’s C38, its 2019 car. Here, the intake is split into four rather than two, a lower ‘snout’ that protrudes further forward, with the upper opening positioned further back. This all seems to tie into the new packaging of the car, where the engine cover appears more puffed out to allow the team to shrink the sidepods.

Looking at last year’s car, for example, the shark fin in front of the rear wing has been flattened out extensively with the small footprint of the airbox section. But the team seems wholly unconcerned with that on the new car, and if anything takes a leaf from the Red Bull playbook from last year.

With the engine cover expanded, the team has also introduced two tunnel-like pieces of bodywork aft of the halo mountings to improve the overall cooling package. The car has cooling vents on top, and also offers a release for hot air with the opening at the back of the bodywork. This is also where the revised sidepods come in.

Through these serrations, the aerodynamicists appear to have found a way to seal up the floor by chaining together some tight, strong vortices to use as a barrier to any intruding air

One of the biggest areas of development last year was in the sidepod design, given the removal of bargeboards requiring teams to rethink how they interact with the wheel turbulence. Alfa persisted with its rounded sidepods featuring a heavy undercut, but many of its rivals had gravitated towards a downwash design to help build more performance from the rear of the car. The C43 thus follows suit, and will tuck the airflow neatly underneath the cooling tunnels and around the revised rear suspension package.

Another visible new addition to the car sits along the edge of the floor, with Alfa opting to include a series of serrations along the flanks to try and claw back performance from 2023’s revised rules. With a 15mm cut to each of the floor’s edges and fences in a bid to combat porpoising, the teams had to contend with a performance cut to the ground effect-style floors introduced last year.

Through these serrations, the aerodynamicists appear to have found a way to seal up the floor by chaining together some tight, strong vortices to use as a barrier to any intruding air. Of course, Autosport doesn’t have access to a windtunnel and thus it’s impossible to say clearly what Alfa is looking for with its series of serrations, but it seems to be the prevailing theory.

In other pleasing details, the beam wing underneath the main rear wing construction has a waved trailing edge, which can reduce noise and stalling, particularly helpful for the upper element as it runs to a high angle of attack. It’s a small aspect, but it shows the team’s attention to detail as it hopes to enjoy a bigger window of performance compared to last season.

Attention to detail is evident in the C43's design as Alfa targets a larger window of performance where it can thrive

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

Alfa kicked off its 2022 aspirations strongly thanks to a light car relative to the opposition but, as the other cars began to lose weight, Alfa lost its edge. Regardless, it was a solid year, and its sixth-place finish in the constructors’ championship meant that the team could recruit new people to bolster its ambitions.

With Frederic Vasseur, who helped consolidate the team after a shaky period in the mid-2010s, now out of the picture, it’ll be fascinating to see Andreas Seidl’s vision for the team as he comes on board as CEO. For Alfa itself, the hopes will be on a last hurrah before the Italian marque ceases to name the team, but there’s a big gulf to bridge between the bottom five teams and the McLaren-Alpine duopoly over fourth and fifth in the championship.

If Alfa has been able to tidy up its reliability over the off-season, then its efforts can be poured squarely into performance. It may not be able to keep pace with the teams ahead of it, but it bodes well in its hopes to at least retain sixth in the constructors’. It has few problems with the driving line-up of Zhou and Valtteri Bottas; one is a multiple grand prix winner, the other a sophomore who had a quietly impressive rookie season. Give them the car to perform, and they’ll put it where it should be.

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Historically, Sauber and Alfa Romeo have kicked off a season strongly, but lethargy has contrived to cut that down as budgetary constraints rather deprived it of its momentum. With extra cash and with Audi now taking a stake, Alfa/Sauber looks to be in the ascendancy - the C43 just needs to match those ambitions.

Will the final Sauber to carry Alfa Romeo logos build on the progress made last year?

Photo by: Alfa Romeo