Alfa Romeos mediocre F1 season heralded its era of evolution: Prime Tire – The Athletic

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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where were wondering why Williams and Sauber are both launching their 2024 cars on February 5. There are *checks calendar* 28 other days that month. TheBarbenheimer phenomenononly works once, people.

Anyway, there are 56 days until the 2024 Formula One season. Weve got two more 2023 team seasons to review. Im Patrick, and Madeline Coleman will be along shortly. Lets get to it.

The photo below is your first result when you search Getty for Alfa Romeo.

That sums up the teams 2023 season pretty well. Alfa Romeo certainly was involved in F1 races in 2023. If a group of F1 cars were racing around a track somewhere, Alfa Romeo was definitely among them!

Sauber no doubt expected a better finish to Alfa Romeos run as title sponsor after finishing sixth in the constructors in 2022. Instead, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu racked up 39 fewer points this time, good enough for a ninth-place finish. And now theyre not called Alfa Romeo. More on that in a second.

Alfa Romeo was largely forgettable most weekends, aside from a double-points finish in Qatar, where Zhou launched from a P19 start into ninth by the checkered flag. But other than the Hungary qualifying mirage where both drivers started in the top 10, the team rarely jumped out on any given weekend. Alfa Romeo fell backward in nearly every statistical category in 2023.

We never quite had enough raw pace to put up a decent challenge and constantly achieve points finishes, Bottas said after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Alfa Romeo's 2023 backslide

Points

55

16

Average Start

13

15

Average Finish

11

13

Q3 Appearances

11

7

% of Laps in Top 10

64%

29%

Trying to analyze this team feels gazing into a murky chasm. Did Zhou take steps forward this season? Is Bottas, now 34, on the decline? Its hard to say on either count when their car was so bleh. Worse than uncompetitive. The C43 was justthere. Both drivers had high points, including the double Q3 appearance in Hungary and the 63 total laps logged inside the points at Qatar. You could point to individual moments for Zhou and Bottas and say, Hey! Look at him go! but that momentum never escaped into the next session. No amount of in-season upgrades helped salvage the season.

The only thing Zhou and Bottas couldve done each week was not make a bad car situation worse. To their credit, they didnt. They consistently hit the ceiling of their Alfa Romeos, as low as it was.

In the end, the constructors championship position corresponds to the pace we were able to show, team principal Alessandro Alunni Bravi said. We need to keep our heads down, knowing we need to work hard and make use of the lessons we learnt to improve. The biggest one is that we need to work as a team each day, having confidence in our people and in our work, but knowing that nobody will give us anything for free.

Luckily for the team, there is change afoot.Work continueson Audis 2026 takeover at Sauber. Alfa Romeo hired James Key as technical directorafter he left McLaren earlier this year. Afterre-signing Zhou, the only thing left unchanged in 2024 should be the driver lineup. Zhou said after Abu Dhabi that the 2024 car will be completely new.

The name is changing, too. As of this month, Alfa Romeo is gone as the teams sponsor. Long live Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber. Sort of.

See, thats the namelisted on the 2024 F1 entry list. Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber. (Kick.com acquired naming rights to the chassis in 2024.) But Alfa Romeo followed up on social mediawith a tease for theirofficial new name, to be revealed on January 1. So we dont have to call it Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber all year. Thats good. We can only guess what that might be.

So we did. Here arefive guesses for Alfa Romeos new name:

Ill see myself out to the next section

As the F1 season wound down, it became apparent with each new upgrade package that other teams were following Red Bulls design concept. The one that struck me was Haas vaunted U.S. GP upgrades out went the bathtub sidepods, and Red Bulls downwash sidepods came in.

Luke Smith and our designer, Drew Jordan, set about figuring out what made Red Bulls car concept so powerful that teamshadto follow it. The result is thisdetailed piece full of graphical breakdowns. A couple of things stood out to me here:

And now well throw it to Madeline for some tidbits that didnt make it into herexcellent piece on how to train an F1 driver.

A performance coach is a common job title in F1, but what does it entail?

Its a huge sacrifice to become a professional sportsman, especially an F1 driver that travels a lot, and its not just training in the sense of training in the gym or training in the diet, said Ben Jacobs, Logan Sargeants performance coach. Thats why they call it (a) performance coach because its trying to enhance their performance to be a better F1 driver. That is a huge, broad term, and theres so many things that fit under that umbrella. Its not as easy as just, This is what you do, and go for it. You have to be very adaptive to the driver.

Jacobs has worked with Sargeant for over six years, and his job continues to evolve. He helps with American drivers physical and mental health, which extends beyond just the gym and includes nutrition and travel options. During Sargeants junior series career, Jacobs sorted out the best time to travel and hotel accommodations and how to beat jet lag. The outside-of-the-gym side of his role has evolved over the years, going from organizing and booking the travel and accommodations and being Sargeants chef to delegating and passing along instructions.

I dont cook the food anymore. I just tell the people what to cook. I dont book all the travel requirements, but I tell the people in the travel office what we need, Jacobs said. So the difference is Ive got more people to do more things for me, which is really nice. But Im still on top of everything in that sense, and probably now Im a security guard and other different things now as well.

GO DEEPER

How F1 drivers train their bodies and minds for the rigors of the track

Guenther Steinerdropped an exclusive mailbag on The Athleticthis week. Ive never been so excited for a mailbag, and he didnt disappoint. My favorite was the question about who hed pick to live on a desert island with for one week. (Drive To Survive fans will know the answer .) He also revealed something interesting:

Is there any one driver move that you regret whilst running Haas? Could be a driver you missed out on or one you regret hiring/dropping. Joseph L.

I think we missed out on hiring Nico in the beginning. We talked with him twice, and we always missed out on hiring him. It was his decision, not ours. I think hes a good driver, and maybe five years ago, he was an even better driver, and maybe he would have brought us more success at the time.

Im not regretting it. Its one of the things I say that we could have done this different.

Thats it for Prime Tire this week. Well see you on the other side in 2024.

(Lead image: Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Alfa Romeos mediocre F1 season heralded its era of evolution: Prime Tire - The Athletic