Alfa Romeo rolls out revised C43 livery for Belgian GP

The Alfa Romeo F1 team and partner KICK hope to make heads turn at this week's Belgian Grand Prix, in which the Swiss outfit will race with a special one-off livery adorning its C43 cars.

Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu's machines will feature neon green accents and additional branding celebrating Alfa's partnership with streaming giant KICK.

Kick.com, which was founded by the Hinwill squad's title partner Slate, launched its streaming site in October 2022 and has accrued more than 14 million registered users in its first seven months.

The online social platform stands apart amongst its peers thanks to its unique 95-5 revenue split with its Creators and which has so far generated $15 million for the latter.

"KICK has been disrupting its market sector since its inception, and the livery they created for us for Spa fits into this philosophy: it is different, it is striking, it is something designed to be different and create attention," commented Alfa executive Alessandro Alunni Bravi.

"Their focus on creators, which is very clearly exemplified on the car livery itself, is not dissimilar to how we operate as a team: our strength, and the strenght of the platform, is only as sizeable as that of those who contribute to it – in our case, our team members trackside and at home."

• Read also: Zhou baffled by 'strange' start line glitch in Hungarian GP

Alfa Romeo will head to Spa hoping to turn around its fortunes after a difficult outing in Hungary last weekend. Zhou and Bottas enjoyed a strong performance in qualifying with the pair setting respectively the 5th and 7th fastest time on Saturday.

But a start line issue for the Chinese driver and the commotion that followed at the first corner compromised both Zhou and Bottas' race.

"We had a good chance to turn a strong qualifying into points but, unfortunately, our race got compromised on lap one, just after the start," Bottas said.

"Zhou, who was in front of me, had some issues with the brake system strategy, so I had to move around him, losing some momentum.

"There's a positive we will take with us onto Belgium, we unlocked something more from our package on Saturday, so definitely the potential was there and we will aim to build on that.

"Of course, Spa will be a completely different track, but we will be working hard this week to find the right configuration to further progress and kick back right away."

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