Valtteri Bottas has suggested that Alfa Romeo’s race pace could put it in a position to battle Mercedes at the opening race of the 2023 Formula 1 season in Bahrain.
After rising up to sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship last term, Alfa Romeo is hoping to make further progress this season with its new C43 car.
The Hinwil-based side enjoyed a productive pre-season test, with the team completing 402 laps in total and Bottas setting the third-fastest lap time on the final day.
Ahead of the season getting underway this weekend, Bottas has suggested that testing signified Alfa Romeo will be in amongst a competitive midfield order again this season.
“Not as fast as Red Bull, not as fast as Ferrari and also Aston Martin looked faster in race pace,“ the Finn admitted when asked about the speed of Alfa Romeo’s 2023 challenger.
“But other than that, it’s really close. Like you said, the time of the day makes a big difference, engine modes can make a difference up to one second per lap but taking that into account we should be in the mix.”
Pressed further on whether his exclusion of Mercedes meant Alfa Romeo can hope to fight the German outfit, Bottas believes there is a possibility he could be contending with his former team.
“From the long runs, it seemed we could. There were some runs in which they were faster than us, but then there were times in which they were slower than us,” he explained.
“It really depends [on] if they managed to fix any issues that they potentially had, but from our numbers they didn’t look like they were going to be fighting for the win. But you never know.”
Following five seasons with Mercedes, Bottas embarked on a new chapter in his career with Alfa Romeo last season.
The ex-Williams driver began the campaign strongly, scoring 46 points across the opening nine rounds of the campaign.
However, a stagnant development programme witnessed the Italian marque slip down the order, with Bottas only accumulating a further four points beyond that.
Bottas has now attributed Alfa Romeo’s decline in competitiveness midway through last year to being restricted on set-up choices, but the 10-time F1 race winner is confident that the team has addressed those issues with its latest car.
“Already last year I felt I was very much on top and fully comfortable with the car and the team,” he said.
“Last year, we’re actually quite limited with the set-up options, because of the balance behaviour of the car, being quite oversteery in high-speed and then understeering in the low speed, so we tried to adapt with the set-up but were a bit boxed, sometimes.
“This year we seem to have a bit more tools to play with, due to the nature of the car, we’ve got it more together in terms of the low-speed to high-speed balance, but this year I could skip the whole learning process of the team, so can just focus on the work at hand and it’s way more pleasant than last year.”
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