“Now, it’s time to get to the track and see how this car performs. I’m happy to get back to racing and I’m confident there will be much more to come from us soon.”
The floor tweaks designed to end porpoising, which include raising the side edges by 15mm, have been a key focus, as they have for all F1 teams.
“We focused our effort mainly on getting around the new regs on the floor because it’s a 15mm change on the floor. But it’s quite a departure, which dragged a lot of effort from our side.”
Sauber used Ferrari customer gearboxes for many years, but in a strategic move built its own for the first season of the new regulations in 2022.
Monchaux concedes that the team could have done a better job and has thus made a revised gearbox as well as new rear suspension, and changed the cooling layout, which was a weakness last year.
“We identified quite early that the biggest area where we wanted to focus was the rear end of the car, so we did a completely new rear end, new gearbox, new rear suspension, bodywork, cooler installation, and that’s where also the car will be most different visibly for people outside, which was for us a needed step to also address some of the weakness we’ve been analysing last season.”
Last year no one really knew what to expect with the first cars built to the new regulations, and teams were caught out by porpoising.
“There are still a lot of unknowns, but it’s different unknowns!” said Monchaux. “So on the pure topic of porpoising, I think the change of regulation and all the knowledge we built up during the year will make it less of an issue.
“And I’m hoping it will not be there at all. We’ll see in a couple of days. But there are still a lot of unknowns.”
“There’s only one direction to follow: up, higher, and better”
Valtteri Bottas spoke of the team’s potential to improve on last year, where Alfa Romeo finished sixth in the constructors’ championship, level on points with Aston Martin.
“It’s been an interesting first season with the team, we made some pretty solid progress together, and now there’s only one direction to follow: up, higher, and better,” he said.
“There is obviously still work to do and things to improve, but I am confident we have it in ourselves to aim for even higher results this year. I cannot wait to go back to racing, I am fully charged and eager to get the new season started.”
Regarding the team’s potential form he said: “Obviously I’ve been getting updates always like how things are going, what is new and very much involved in that.
“And I can’t wait to try it, see how it feels. We all have big hopes for the season. But you never know how innovative other teams have been.”
