Alfa Romeo Pre-Season Testing: What we learnt from Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou’s initial C42 run in Barcelona
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The first Pre-season Testing in Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has concluded and all the 10 teams have completed a successful shakedown of their 2022 cars. With new regulations in place, every bit of data collected from the test shall be useful in devising strategies across the season. Let’s know how well Alfa Romeo managed in the Testing at Barcelona.
Incoming Valtteri Bottas replaced fellow Finn Kimi Raikonnen and will be partnering debutant Guanyu Zhou for the 2022 Formula One season. Alfa Romeo had a forgettable 2021 campaign finishing 9th in the standings behind Williams. The Italians hope for better fortunes as new regulations roll in providing a fresh new start for the team.
Valtteri Bottas Lap timings and laps completed
Bottas who finished 3rd in the Drivers Championship in 2021 had a rather agonising Pre-season test. The Finn could only tally 54 laps across the 3 days of testing. Bottas said “we did have a few issues, and the issues we had were pretty costly with time. Some issues we had with reliability, some with mechanical things. We understand it, luckily, completely and we understand how to fix it, we just didn’t have enough time during the day to fix it properly.”
| Day | No. Of Laps Completed | Rank | Fastest Lap Time |
| Day 1 | 23 | P10 | 1:22:572 |
| Day 2 | 21 | P15 | 1:22:288 |
| Day 3 | 10 | P16 | 1:30:433 |
Guanyu Zhou Lap Timings and Laps completed
With his Formula One debut in the 2022 season, Guanyu Zhou is set to become the first Chinese national to race in the sport. He was not present on the first day of the testing but replaced test driver Robert Kubica for the remaining 2 days. With 112 laps covered, Zhou covered more laps than Bottas did across 3 days, outperforming him on both occasions. His best time was 1:21:885 on day 2 finishing P16.
Zhou briefly bought out the Red Flag during the 3rd day after losing his wheel at turn 10 halting the session for 20 minutes. The Chinese racer was back on the wheel for the final minutes of testing but stopped on track due to some technical issues.
| Day | No. Of Laps Completed | Rank | Fastest Lap Time |
| Day 1 | – | – | – |
| Day 2 | 71 | P10 | 1:21:885 |
| Day 3 | 41 | P13 | 1:21:939 |
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Struggles faced by Alfa Romeo
Every team bar Alfa Romeo and Haas completed a century of laps on the first day and completed the second-lowest total number of laps: 175. The team faced major reliability issues across the three days and the lack of mileage looks worrying.
Bottas is hopeful and states “It’s only testing and we can’t really compare what we are doing against the other teams, but the feeling is that we are going in the right direction. The most important thing is to work together as a team to make sure we take a step forward ahead of testing in Bahrain.”
Even rookie driver Zhou said, “I am confident we can make up the time we lost and be fully ready for the season ahead.” He said the team could collect enough data from his runs and hence it wasn’t a huge issue, but that wouldn’t be enough to silence critics.
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Key positives for Alfa Romeo to take away
There were very few positives for Alfa Romeo after a compromised set of runs in Barcelona. The team are yet to reveal their new car and we can only hope that the reliability issues will be addressed before heading to Bahrain. Although the team did not suffer any major hurdles in aerodynamics, the team will have to tackle the challenge of Purpoising and will bring revised Aero gear in the next testing session
Alfa Romeo will unveil the official livery of C42 on February 27th before heading to Bahrain for the Official Pre-Season Test. The team is set for a digital launch, with images and videos released to the public and media.
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Tejas Venkatesh
(366 Articles Published)