The newest team to confirm its launch plans is Alfa Romeo, which will debut its 2019 Formula 1 vehicle on February 7.
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On that day, the Swiss team—which is beginning its final campaign as the Italian automaker—plans to make its C43 public in Zurich. After the unveiling, there will probably be a day of filming in Barcelona to work out any kinks before the only preseason test, which begins in Bahrain on February 23, takes place. Alfa Romeo made some encouraging strides last season, with Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou turning in some outstanding performances, particularly in the early going.
But due to inconsistent reliability throughout the season, it was unable to earn more points and ultimately placed sixth in the constructors’ championship, tied with Aston Martin for second place but winning on countback. Bottas and Zhou have been kept on for the 2023 season, however there will be changes throughout the team as Mattia Binotto’s replacement, team principal Fred Vasseur, has left to join Ferrari. Although a new CEO has not yet been named, it was made known over the winter that Andreas Seidl, a former team principal for McLaren, will be joining the parent Sauber corporation as its new CEO before the changeover to Audi.
Due to the second-half slump of 2022, which exposed organisational flaws, the squad is fully aware of the areas in which it needs to improve this season. Speaking during the winter, Bottas believed that Alfa Romeo needed to increase its rate of car development in order to stay competitive in the midfield, in addition to increasing its dependability. The speed at which we implemented upgrades was, in reality, one of our shortcomings, Bottas said to reporters. “We just didn’t have enough human strength to make the parts, and that was largely due to production. While some other teams, like Mercedes, currently have more personnel and power to develop things more quickly. Additionally, rather than working to build the car, a lot of effort and energy was directed at attempting to fix the dependability difficulties we had. So, in the midst of the year, that caused us quite a bit of distraction. We can once more only concentrate on the performance now that, say, the reliability is at a good level.
| 3 February | Red Bull |
| 6 February | Williams (livery) |
| 7 February | Alfa Romeo |
| 11 February | AlphaTauri (livery) |
| 13 February | McLaren and Aston Martin |
| 14 February | Ferrari |
| 15 February | Mercedes |
| 16 February | Alpine |
In addition to previous academy driver Shwartzman, Ferrari stated that former Alfa Romeo and longtime Ferrari-affiliated driver Giovinazzi will serve as the team’s F1 reserve driver in 2023. Giovinazzi will fight for Ferrari in the World Endurance Championship this year in their brand-new 499P hypercar, while Shwartzman will race in the GT World Challenge Europe GT3 division. Each grand prix this season will feature at least one of the two. Shwartzman completed 116 laps on the post-season test day at the Yas Marina circuit in addition to two free practise runs for Ferrari at Circuit of the Americas and Abu Dhabi.
