Even before arriving in Mexico, Alfa Romeo had set its sights on the nineteenth stage of the world championship as one of the most suitable for extracting the potential of the C43, given some characteristics on paper that were favorable to the single-seater. Firstly because the car of the Hinwil team tends to prefer low and medium speed corners and, secondly, because the asphalt of the Mexican track is rather smooth and flowing, except for certain localized sections, and this allows lowering the car and extract better performance from the surface.
Taking a step back, the C43 has proven to suffer on rough road surfaces or those where the team is forced to raise the car, such as Singapore or Austin, but this peculiar characteristic of the Mexico City track has helped bring both the cars in Q3, something that hadn’t happened since the Hungarian Grand Prix. For this reason, on the eve of the race expectations were very high, especially thinking of it as a great opportunity to get closer to Williams in the constructors’ standings.
However, the situation reversed dramatically on Sunday, when neither car managed to finish in the top thirteen. Everything started to go in the wrong direction right from the moment of departure, when the synchronization of the gearbox was lost on Valtteri Bottas’ car: a problem that can arise on certain occasions, but on this occasion it happened precisely at the worst moment, causing losing to the Finn when the traffic lights went out and while progressing. In scenarios like this, the team carries out a procedure to “learn” the gears again, but it’s one thing to do this in a free practice session, where performance is not the crucial aspect, and it’s another thing to have to deal with this problem in the race.
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Zhou Guanyu, Alfa Romeo C43
This immediately compromised the race, as it also cost the Finn a few positions, who thus slipped to twelfth place. However, even with Guanyu Zhou the first part of the race did not provide great satisfaction, given that in the first fifteen laps he was overtaken first by Pierre Gasly and, later, by Alex Albon. At that point both Alfa Romeo drivers remained stationary and stuck in the little train created by Nico Hulkenberg, eighth at the time, and by the Williams driver himself, who could rely on a car that was very fast on the straights and difficult to overtake. , especially for a single-seater with drag problems like the C43.
The interesting aspect is that, at that point, the Biscione team tried to differentiate the strategy: on the one hand, Zhou was stopped after only 21 laps, while Bottas was called back to the pits ten laps later, a few moments before the Kevin Magnussen’s accident. The subsequent release of the red flag weighed differently on the two standard bearers. On the one hand, the Chinese driver had to restart with the set of hard compound tires with which he had already covered the first part of the second stint before the interruption, thus finding himself on tires that were more difficult to turn on than his rivals.
On the other hand, this also impacted the race of Valtteri Bottas, who had stopped in the pits in the lap preceding the one that saw Magnussen come into contact with the barriers. The red flag in fact allowed all those drivers who had not yet returned to make a “free” pit stop, thus moving the Finn from a position valid for the top ten before stopping in sixteenth place on the new starting grid.
![Zhou Guanyu, Alfa Romeo C43](https://cdn-3.motorsport.com/images/mgl/Y99edvAY/s1000/zhou-guanyu-alfa-romeo-c43-1.jpg)
Photo by: Alfa Romeo
Zhou Guanyu, Alfa Romeo C43
After the restart, Bottas managed to climb up to thirteenth place, while Zhou slipped back, finishing in the last positions of the standings. To further complicate the team’s situation, a tear-off visor was added which, having got stuck in the cooling duct of the rear brakes of the Finn’s car, negatively affected the management of temperatures, which began to reach a more critical threshold.
On the one hand, the fact that Hulkenberg in tenth position was able to hold on and maintain the group for a good number of laps gave Bottas a hand, who was thus able to stay in the area for the fight for the top ten. However, on the other hand he also had a negative influence, because he created a DRS train from which it was quite difficult to escape as it did not have the necessary speed delta to overtake his opponents. “Behind the Alpine mountains we had no chance of passing with the DRS train, it was so difficult. When the car in front has DRS there is little that can be done and I had problems with the brakes overheating, which didn’t make life easy,” explained the Alfa Romeo driver.
The team’s last hopes were then lost in the contact with Lance Stroll, who definitively compromised even the faintest chance of scoring, although in reality it had already been compromised by the various previous episodes.
![Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR23, spins while battling with Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo C43](https://cdn-3.motorsport.com/images/mgl/YXRaL3N0/s1000/lance-stroll-aston-martin-amr2-1.jpg)
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR23, spins while battling with Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo C43
“I think we had a better pace than we showed, today’s race didn’t demonstrate well what we could potentially do, but qualifying went very well compared to other events. We hope to maintain this trend in Brazil too and fight for points”, added Bottas, underlining how the fight for the top ten is now more fundamental than ever. In fact, thanks to Daniel Ricciardo’s good race, AlphaTauri has now managed to overtake Alfa Romeo in the standings, with the latter slipping to ninth place ahead of only Haas.
“Today was a difficult day, I’d say. We had a reasonable start to the weekend, qualifying went well. The pace we saw on Friday in free practice with a lot of fuel on board was also decent. Saturday was positive, with two cars in Q3. But in the race there was nothing to do. And now we can see that AlphaTauri is also going strong, their race was really good. Williams got two points again. Sao Paulo is our chance. I think if we can’t make progress in Sao Paulo, maybe it’s still possible to fight, but I would say then it’s becoming very, very difficult,” commented Xavi Pujolar.
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