Alfa Romeo have made a few new changes to their car design for the 2023 season. According to technical director, Jan Monchaux, the team made “brave” decisions in their design to unlock otherwise closed development paths. The team’s C43 is radically different from last year’s C42 mostly in terms of the rear and floor, an intentional focus for the team. 

Moncheaux explained that the project started “a couple of weeks after last year’s roll out” and focused on the areas for improvement that were made clear last year but were unable to be implemented in 2022. 

“Therefore, we concentrated mainly on the rear part of the car,” said Moncheaux, “where we wanted to be brave enough to take the next step. In terms of pure development on the rear end, it opens the door to a lot of other solutions we couldn’t implement last year.

“Then throughout the season, it became relatively clear that we had reliability issues which then [became our focus], there are a lot of things we changed on the car but also internally to address it as historically we were always quite strong with reliability, but we somehow lost what used to be one of our biggest strengths.”

The floors had to be changed after the FIA decided that all cars on the grid must have their floors raised by 15mm. This was done to combat porpoising, hopefully preventing it. Moncheaux admits that this tweak had the team “scratching their heads.” 

As Moncheax explains, “We like change, and so it is always a new opportunity when rules are changing. We were slightly irritated by the timing because it was decided very late [August 2022], and usually late changes favour the bigger outfits.

“The changes are mainly on the floor side where the FIA decided to lift the edges by 15mm, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was enough to keep us scratching our heads and having to redo the floor and the rear end of the car alongside those new rules. 

“So far, I am pretty happy with the progress we did.”

The C43 will be the final car under the Alfa Romeo banner as the team will revert to the Sauber name for 2024 and ’25, before they adopt the Audi name in 2026. 

The livery has received praise from fans, and team driver, Valtteri Bottas, said, “The C43 is finally here, and I cannot wait to bring it out on track. I really like our new livery, I think it’s stunning, and a fine evolution from last year’s one.”