2023 Qatar Grand Prix – Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK Preview

Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK heads to Doha as the sport makes a welcome return to the Losail circuit for the Qatar Grand Prix. It’s the first race in the country since its inaugural event, in 2021, and the team will aim to seize the early initiative in the relatively unknown venue as it pushes for performance in the closing stages of the 2023 season.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: 

“We head to Qatar with the determination to extract all we can from our weekend. We came back from the Asian double-header with no points added to our tally, but there were still some positives to take: we had decent pace in Suzuka, and we were not too far from our direct competitors, as we learned more about the upgrade package we recently introduced. What we missed was to put everything together when it mattered and, as we head to Doha, this is what the entire team must work for. We have to be at the top of our performance from the only practice session on Friday onwards, even more crucial than usual with a Sprint Event. By putting our focus onto extracting more performance from our package, we’ll be able to make that extra step forward to get back into the top ten.”

Valtteri Bottas (Car 77): “Suzuka was an unfortunate weekend, with my race ending after just a couple of laps when I felt our car had some potential. I was glad to go back home to Europe for a couple of days after the double header; I kept busy training and working at the sim, to understand our upgrades further, and now I’m eager to get back on track. I have raced here in Qatar in 2021 already, and it will be interesting to be back racing with the new cars. There are still many opportunities for us to return to our point-scoring ways, starting from this weekend already: this is a Sprint Event, and with limited practice time, we must get the most out of our car, and place ourselves in favourable positions on the grid both on Saturday and, even more important, on Sunday. Our competitors aren’t that far away, and as usual this season it will be a matter of hundredths of a second: I am confident that if we do our homework well, we’ll have a positive chance to achieve good results here.”

Zhou Guanyu (Car 24): “We’ve been working hard, following our return from Japan, to analyse the data gathered from the new upgrades to further maximise them. Although we didn’t bring home points in Suzuka, I was pleased with our performance, and I reckon we made a further step in terms of speed which now can allow us to fight just outside of the top ten – with an aim to improve even more. For the first time this season, we head to a track where I have never raced before; I have been working hard at the sim to come prepared, as we will have limited practice sessions this weekend. Sprints allow even less margin for mistakes, so it will be extremely important to be at our very best from Friday onwards: we have twice as many chances to score points this weekend, and I am ready to put up some nice battles in the field.”