Why Alfa Romeo lost ground in 2022: 'Competition spent more money'

Guanyu Zhou will face an important season in 2023. The Chinese driver is starting his second year in F1 and hopes to take a step forward compared to last year. Meanwhile, with Frederic Vasseur, the man who brought him in has left the team. The team's deal with Audi is already gathering momentum in the background. GPblog spoke to the driver about it in an exclusive interview.

Where will Alfa Romeo stand in 2023?

Alfa Romeo's second half of the season in 2022 went badly. After the Swiss team had started very strongly, only four points were scored after the summer break. Before the summer break, they scored 51. Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake finished just ahead of Aston Martin (on as many points, but with Valtteri Bottas' fifth place at Imola a better race result), but at a fair distance from Alpine and McLaren.

Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake, meanwhile, has presented the new C43 and so the question is what is their goal for next year? Should the team pay particular attention to the competition behind or can they use the new car to attack the teams above in the rankings?

"Never say never. Last year, other teams were able to develop and also tried to bring new parts much more efficiently and much more quicker than us. So that's why [we struggled in] the second half season. So at the end, it was very tough to keep teams like Aston Martin behind us because they had spent a lot more money. I feel like the new car has been a good improvement compared to last year’s car, but you never know what the others have done," Zhou said in a conversation with GPblog.

"I don't see no reason why we couldn't [compete against McLaren and Alpine] but it's not gonna be easy to be catching up with them. Last year, when they finished off the season, they were a good step ahead of us."

Vasseur leaves

With Bottas and Zhou, at first glance little changes to Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake's line-up, but a lot has changed behind the scenes. Frederic Vasseur has left to become team boss at Ferrari and there is no like-for-like replacement. Andreas Seidl has taken over his role as CEO to lead Sauber from Alfa Romeo to Audi, while Alessandro Alunni Bravi has been appointed team representative.

Zhou naturally wished Vasseur the best of luck with his new employer, but in doing so he sees an important person leave. "He was my first team principal and the guy who made my dreams come true so I very much appreciated all the stuff he did for me over the last year and a half."

For Zhou, however, the departure does not change much about how he works within the team. ''We have Andreas (Seidl) and Alessandro (Alunni Bravi) coming. I really feel both of them know very well how to work with the F1 team and Andreas has so much experience on the technical side as well as driver management. So I feel confident he will ensure the team keep improving year by year. So from my side there's no big change."

Audi's role

In 2023, the team originally called Sauber will continue to race under the name of title sponsor Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake. After this season, the Italian sponsor will disappear from the car, although the partnership with Ferrari will continue until 2025. After that, Audi will take over.

"I'm not involved in anything yet with Audi because at the minute I'm still with Alfa Romeo together with Sauber. I'm trying to do the best for my team and it's nice in a way to see the team's future will be settled. So it's nice for us. Everyone in the factory knows their future is secured. But then at the same time it doesn't really matter for me about the Audi offer as long as we can perform or have the strong car."

For now, the 23-year-old driver, who has the company's Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at his home, is happy with where he is and will mainly focus on making progress. The season starts with the winter test in Bahrain, followed a week later by the Grand Prix in the same country. That is when Zhou will really see how his team looks in 2023.