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2023 Spanish Grand Prix Preview

Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK heads to very familiar ground as it prepares for the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. With the Circuit de Catalunya being a popular choice for testing and an ideal layout for data evaluation, the team will aim to make the most of the opportunities it presents, while maximising the new aero package first introduced during last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.

Barcelona is a tune that has no mysteries. The layout’s combination of slow and fast corners, long straights, and elevation changes made this an ideal circuit for testing new machinery, and when combined with the warm(er) conditions prevalent in Catalonia during late winter, the venue was chosen for countless pre-season winter testing events.

No driver on the grid can claim to not know every inch of tarmac around this track, nor can engineers be surprised by the behaviour of a car here, despite the differences in temperature, track grip, and even car development that occur between a testing run in late February and a race weekend practise session in early June. Barcelona is a fantastic benchmark for evaluating progression throughout the first five months of a season, assessing sections under known conditions, and getting a sense of where one is and where one has to go.

We first saw the C43 on track in Barcelona. “The moment you walked into the room, you took my breath away,” Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé sung in their 1987 hit “Barcelona.” That’s how we felt when the C43 first touched the track, back in February on a bright morning in Catalonia on our filming day. A new vehicle has just been introduced in its aggressive livery, with a lot of potential to unfurl and a lot of questions to answer. We return to Barcelona four months and six races later with a much-improved package, a testament to the team’s effort, both at the factory and on the track, to squeeze as much performance as possible from the vehicle.

Barcelona, as Freddie said in the song, “was the first time that we met,” and when the C43 comes to the Catalan city later this week, it, too, will seek to shake the foundations from the sky.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “We are looking forward to heading to Barcelona, a track we know well and where we will be able to extract more from the upgrades we introduced in Monaco. We return to the track where our C43 made its debut, in a filming day, four months ago. A lot has happened since, and there’s still a long way to go until the finish line: but everyone in the team, both at base and at the races, is working to push the team in the right direction. We may not have scored points in Monaco, but the job done on Sunday both on track, in the garage and on the pitwall was good and we can build on that. We have to keep pushing, on a track that can offer more regular circumstances, and make that step forward to get back into the points.”

Valtteri Bottas (Car 77): “I am very curious as we go to Barcelona. The track layout has changed and there will be an element of discovery to make in practice: in addition, it will be another opportunity to extract performance from our upgrades, especially on a track that is more traditional, in terms of layout, than Monaco. The performance in the Principality was good, as a team: making up four places in Monaco is never easy, even though we just missed out on the points. We must aim for more, though, and Barcelona can be the place where we make a step in the right direction: I’m not the only one in the team who is eager to be on track there, everyone is confident and that’s the spirit we all want to see in the team.”

Zhou Guanyu (Car 24): “The Circuit de Catalunya is a track we all know well, it’s a known quantity that allows you to really assess where you stand. I enjoy driving here and I’m really looking forward to being back on this track following our filming day earlier in the year. Our Monaco upgrades should be even more effective on this layout, so I am confident we can have some fun and be a bit better here. Last week we were able to make the most progress of all, albeit from the back of the grid, and hopefully that is a good sign going forward. The objective remains the same – qualifying as high as we can and converting that position into points come Sunday.”

Priyadarshan G

Priyadarshan G

priyadarshan

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