Alfa Romeo F1 reveals launch date for 2023 car

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Alfa Romeo has become the latest team to confirm the launch date of its new 2023 contender, with the C43 set to take its bow on Tuesday February 7.

The team confirmed on Friday that the launch event will take place in Zurich, Switzerland.

It's expected that Alfa Romeo will then head to Barcelona, where it will use one of its permitted filming days to conduct a shakedown session for the new car ahead of the official pre-season test in Bahrain later in the month.

Read also: Red Bull opts for early 2023 launch date in New York

Leading figures from the team are expecting to attend the launch and meet the media, including drivers Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu both of whom have been retained from last season.

But there has been change at the top, with team principal Frédéric Vasseur having departed over the winter break to take up a new position at Maranello as team boss of Ferrari.

Former McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has joined the team's parent Sauber company as the new CEO ahead of its transition to Audi ownership in 2026, but it's not yet known if he will also be in charge of the race team in the interim period.

Whoever takes over for this season, their top priority will be to address reliability concerns with this year's car that increasingly impacted their on-track campaign last season.

"It's a fact one of our weaknesses was the speed of bringing the upgrades," Bottas told Motorsport.com before the winter break. "Also all the reliability issues we had - a lot of the focus and energy was focused on trying to fix those instead of trying to develop the car."

Alfa Romeo is the ninth team to announce its launch plans for 2023. Currently the first team, to take the covers off this year's car will be Red Bull on February 3, followed by Williams on February 6.

Alfa Romeo slips into third place in the running order with its February 7 launch, followed by a pause before AlphaTauri shows off its new livery in a weekend event on February 11.

The following week begins with a double header as both McLaren and Aston Martin have selected to hold their events on February, with Ferrari feeling the love on February 14 followed by Mercedes and Alpine on successive dates.

The only team yet to reveal its launch plans is Haas F1.

Pre-season testing will take place in Bahrain over three days from February 23-25, with the first race of the new season - also taking place at Bahrain International Circuit - following on March 5.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.