Alfa Romeo ‘ready to fight for the points’ after successful updates

Alfa Romeo's track engineering manager, Xevi Pujolar, has expressed optimism about his team's performance following the introduction of new components to the C43 ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Alfa Romeo have had a lukewarm start to the 2023 season. They had only one driver pick up points in Bahrain (Valtteri Bottas, P8) and Australia (Zhou Guanyu, P9), while neither failed to finish in the top 10 in Saudi Arabia.

The team is currently eighth in the driver's championship, five points ahead of AlphaTauri and Williams Racing. However, the Hinwil-based team has begun working towards improving the C43 with upgrades. At the Australian GP, they introduced a new nose and front wing to the car.

Alfa Romeo's Pujolar has stated that the updates have worked 'as intended'. He said (via motorsport.com)

“It has been tricky trying to fine-tune everything but I would say that in terms of the updates we have brought, everything has worked as intended We thought the front wing would bring some balance back to the car. Overall, we have some issues with grip but the performance is good. I think we brought a strong package of new items and are ready to fight for the points in the next races.”

Explaining why the front wing and nose were tweaked, he said:

“We modified the wing and nose because we thought there was still performance to be extracted from that area, but of course, we are also working on other areas. This is all part of our development plan.”

Pujolar also disclosed that the team might make a few more changes are expected before the Baku race and stated:

“More innovations are planned, there will be other phases in which we will bring developments. Baku? Yes, there will be updates coming and they will be things related to the new front wing in order to take an even bigger step forward.”

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The Alfa Romeo C43 doesn't have any particular weaknesses, says team's track engineering manager

While Alfa Romeo have failed to pick up as many points as they'd have hoped from the opening three races of the 2023 season, the team's track engineering manager, Xevi Pujolar, believes that the car doesn't have any particular weakness.

The C43, however, has aerodynamic and grip issues, something Valtteri Bottas spoke about in Melbourne last weekend. Pujolar has opined that while the new nose and front wing have increased the car's performance, they still have to work on the overall downforce.

He said:

"I don't think the car has any particular weaknesses at the moment. Now, with the new front wing, the whole car works better. So I think we'll work on developments in general for the car, not concentrated in limited areas."

He added:

"I think some teams, when they are in open DRS qualifying, manage to extract more performance. But otherwise, I would say that it is only the overall downforce that we need to improve. We don't have specific problems in some corner types and for us, it is better this way We can work on the car to improve it overall."