Alfa Romeo C42: better late than never

For the livery, Alfa Romeo – in fact still the Swiss Sauber – enlisted the help of Centro Stile, the design studio of Alfa Romeo. The car comes in a combination of red and white, with ‘Alfa Romeo’ written on the hood in a historic font. The green four-leaf clover is also visible there. It is also striking that the caps of the new 18-inch wheels have a two-tone design, which makes it look like they are wheels with spokes. Not all elements of the C42 got a color: Alfa Romeo left room for ‘naked’ carbon fiber on the sides and front wing of the car.

The design of the C42 incorporates certain elements from other cars, yet is unique. This is how the side pods it tapers backwards and downwards, as is also the case with AlphaTauri, among others, but the Alfa does have the cooling fins such as the Aston Martin AMR22 and the Ferrari F1-75. Under the hood of the C42 is a 1.6-litre V6 with hybrid technology from Ferrari. How the aerodynamic design will work out for the team remains to be seen. On the final day of testing in Barcelona, ​​F1 debutant Guanyu Zhou seemed to struggle quite a bit with the car, although the more experienced Valtteri Bottas had significantly fewer problems.

Special approach

With the camouflage livery during the test days and a later unveiling of the final car, Alfa Romeo opted for a striking strategy. It goes without saying that teams don’t want their aerodynamic design copied, but Alfa Romeo was not exactly the most progressive team on the grid last year with 13 points in the Constructors’ Championship. Other teams, in turn, did everything they could to prevent their designs from being copied. Red Bull takes the cake: the ‘RB18’ that the team showed during the unveiling was completely different from the car with which reigning world champion Max Verstappen appeared on track on the first day of testing.