A tale of two halves at Hinwil

©AlfaRomeo

The team picture

• Constructors standing: P6, 55 points

Alfa Romeo made a bold statement of intent when it swooped in to sign up Valtteri Bottas after the Finn's time at Mercedes came to an end. He's exactly the sort of calm, capable, proven and experienced package needed at the heart of any team hoping to go forward.

It might have seemed a bit of a comedown from Bottas' perspective, but that soon changed when he had the satisfaction of lining up alongside his former Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton on the third row of the grid in Bahrain, and went on to finish in a solid sixth place.

After a good start to the season with seven races out of nine in the points, the rest of the season was less fruitful as developments off the track appeared to leave them somewhat distracted. But it sill proved their best finish to a campaign in a decade as they managed to secure sixth in the championship on count-back, after tying on points with Aston Martin.

The driver line-up

• Valtteri Bottas: P10, 49 points
• Zhou Guanyu: P18, 6 points

The experienced Valtteri Bottas was always going to win this team mate head-to-head over his rookie team mate Zhou Guanyu, as proven by their respective points haul. He started ahead of Zhou on 14 occasions to Zhou's eight, and there was a similar 14 to seven advantage in terms of race finishes. Bottas' best result was fifth at Imola, while Zhou scored his first championship point on his debut in Bahrain and his best result was eighth in Canada.

Both drivers had the same number of DNFs, six apiece, but Zhou wins hands down when it comes to the most spectacular retirement of the season. His accident at the start of the British Grand Prix saw the C42 flipped upside down and then slide on its roll hoop off the track and across the gravel where it then somersaulted over the tyre barrier to get lodged next to the catch fence. Yikes.

That accident wasn't his fault, and overall Zhou proved a very level-headed and safe pair of hands, keeping his nose largely clean across the long season. Given what happened when Mick Schumacher crashed too many times in 2022, that's not a talent to be sneezed at. Zhou has certainly proved himself worthy of a second season in F1, and is no mere 'pay driver' as so many painted him as even before he made his race debut. The question now is, can he take the next step up in 2023?

How 2023 is looking for Alfa Romeo

While Alfa Romeo goes into 2023 with an unchanged driver line-up, behind the scenes everything is in flux. This year Alfa Romeo and Sauber (which operates the race team for the Italian marque) announced that their partnership will finish at the end of 2023, leaving the team ready to link up with Audi in 2026. But that's still a few years away.

On top of that, Sauber has lost its CEO and team principal Frédéric Vasseur, who has been with the team since 2017 and shaped much of what has happened at Hinwil ever since. He's being replaced by former McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl who is certainly no slouch, but his focus is going to be on preparing for the Audi partnership and the next change in engine regulations.

What will the team be able to do in the interregnum? The consensus is that they'll do well just to keep things ticking over, meaning that seventh or eighth place in the constructors championship would almost be a victory for them in 2023.

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