Alfa Romeo reveal launch date for 2023 challenger

Alfa Romeo have become the ninth team to reveal when they will be presenting their new car with which they are set to compete in the 2023 Formula One season.

The Alfa Romeo F1 Team which is operated by the Swiss Sauber company has announced last year that 2023 would be their last year competing in Formula One. The Italian marque which won the first two World Drivers' Championships in the pre-war Alfetta with Nino Farina in 1950 and Juan Manuel Fangio in 1951, made its return to F1 after a 34-year hiatus in 2015 when its logo appeared on the Scuderia Ferrari cars.

In 2018, Alfa Romeo became the title sponsors for Sauber and made its returned to the sport when Sauber was renamed at the beginning of 2019.

The Swiss-Italian team’s 2023 F1 challenger which will be called the C43, will be launched at an event in Zurich.

The car will be piloted by Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas after the team had decided to retain both drivers for the second successive year. The Chinese and the Finn drivers have scored a total of 55 points of which Bottas having registered 49 points.

After leaving the Mercedes team at the end of the 2021 season, the Nastola-born have claimed nine top ten finishes over the course of the 22-race 2022 F1 season with the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix being the highlight of his year thanks to a fifth place finish. His team mate, Zhou who became the first Chinese driver to compete in Formula One scored his first point in F1 on his debut at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but he could only finish two more times in the point-scoring top ten in the remainder of the season.

The team will start the new season with changes at the top after Fred Vasseur had decided to leave Alfa Roemo to take up the Team Principal role at Ferrari. In the meantime, the team has announced that arrival of McLaren's Andreas Seidl who will be joining the Sauber Group as CEO. The German’s first task will be to find a replacement for Vasseur ahead of the new season.

Ferrari’s 2023 F1 car will break cover the following day and eight-time constructors’ champions Mercedes will unveil their W14 on February 15. Just a daf after Mercedes, it will be Alpine’s turn to pull the covers off their car on February 16 in London.