At the end of the 2021 World Cup, when the passage of Valtteri Bottas from Mercedes toAlfa Romeo for the 2022 season, few would have even remotely imagined that the Finn could relaunch the challenge to his former teammate, thanks above all to an abyss in the potential of the single-seaters in the last world championship, which saw the Hinwil team finish in ninth place behind also of Williams.
And instead, thanks to the new regulations and a contemporary crisis of results of the Mercedes, the number 77 managed to cross the finish line in front of the Englishman in the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, touching an encore in Miami only for a mistake made in the last stages of the race. At present, the team from Hinwil – thanks largely to Bottas, contrary to the performances of Guanyu Zhou – figure 5th in the constructors’ standings a 64 points of detachment from the home champion, third, with Bottas 8th just six points behind the seven-time world champion. At this point, the question arises: will Alfa Romeo seriously battle with Mercedes and surpass it in the ranking?
He tried to answer this question Xevi Pujolarin charge of the track engineers of the Swiss team, while not providing overly optimistic forecasts: “In Miami we would have been happy to be able to fight with them to stay ahead of them in the race – commented the Catalan coach – but in the league the story is different: our main opponents remain, as I said before, Alpine, AlphaTauri and McLaren. However, we’ll try as well as being the third force also challenging Mercedes, it still remains our goal. For sure, now everyone will bring updates and I can say that we are in a more comfortable position because we have a certain advantage over them. At some point, probably, it will be more difficult. We can expect teams like Mercedes and McLaren to make great strides, and there we will have to see the evolution of the challenges ”.
Apart from the head-to-head on the track, Pujolar does not forget another aspect that could greatly affect the battle, this time linked to the budget cap: “In the end, we too have a spending limit, just like everyone else – He admitted – we will have to see who will be able to be more efficient, although there are some factors that can play in favor of the budget cap, while still others can lead to a disadvantage ”. In Barcelona, however, news on the C42 are planned to complete a virtuous circle in terms of updates that began in Imola: “We expect a good leap forward in terms of performance and we have even more in store for the continuation of the season”Pujolar concluded.
#Alfa #Romeo #dream #force #FormulaPassionit
