(Motorsports news) Alfa Romeo made a huge stride forward in Qatar, as Valtteri Bottas finished eighth and Zhou Guanyu ninth after a difficult run of one point in eight weekends. Alfa moved up to eighth place in the championship standings, ahead of Haas, and just seven points behind Williams.
While Williams has made it clear that it is shifting its focus to the 2024 project, rivals Alfa and AlphaTauri have continued to bring new parts to the track, while Haas is betting big on a major upgrade package that will be unveiled in Austin this weekend, adding a new dimension to the battle for minor placings.
“We are convinced that we can fight for P7 until the end of the season, based on our decision to keep developing the car,” Alunni Bravi told. “Of course, we need to execute each race weekend a flawless race like Qatar, both on the team and driver side. After a difficult period, Qatar was a good reward for the team, for the confidence, and for our drivers.”
“However, the championship is still lengthy, with five races and two other sprint sessions.” So there is still opportunity for improvement. We must look ahead to discover further performance in the upcoming race.” While the Haas changes have received more notice because to their complete nature, Alfa has quietly been altering its car race every race, with a reworked beam wing in Qatar completing the recent sequence of updates.
“There is not only one way to develop the car, it depends also on what you find in the wind tunnel,” said Alunni Bravi, a researcher. “I believe that every team has some developments, but you must determine whether there is anything that brings that extra performance that is required to take the next step.”
“We decided at the start of the year to really push the development, and we will continue to develop the car until the very last race.” Sometimes a substantial update is possible, such as the new floor we had in Singapore. “However, after a major upgrade, we always try to optimize the package.” In Qatar, we finalized the Singapore package with a lower rear wing flap, which was required to have a reasonable performance on medium/low-speed corners while not being penalized too much with top speed, which remains one of our weaknesses.”
Alunni Bravi feels the car will compete in Austin, but he also sees potential to score elsewhere. “I think that for us we have seen that where we have a low-efficiency track and we need to have a higher downforce level, our car suits better these conditions,” he went on to say. “So we believe Austin will be on our side. Mexico will be a little more difficult because I believe Williams and AlphaTauri will be very strong there.”
And, of course, Sao Paulo and Abu Dhabi have always produced exciting and unpredictable races. “Everyone is new to Las Vegas. We have no idea what to expect. However, our package was competitive in Miami.
