Sauber Motorsport -owned Alfa Romeo was the first to put its new ground-effect car for 2022 Formula 1 on track, specifically at the Fiorano circuit, owned by Ferrari, its power unit supplier.
Valtteri Bottas got behind the wheel of the new Alfa Romeo and managed to complete a total of 100 kilometers, the maximum distance allowed in a filming day according to the regulations of the category itself, however, the Finnish driver was forced to stop its activity on the track for more than three hours due to a technical problem in the C42.
Quickly, the Hinwil technicians were able to find out what caused the gearbox hydraulic loss that caused the car’s transmission to lock up.
While it is true that the system is still supplied by Ferrari, everything else was redesigned by the engineers led by Jan Monchaux : the carbon box is an Alfa Romeo design because the rear suspension of his car does not adopt the F1-75 scheme from the Maranello team, the Swiss have opted for a “push rod” suspension that requires moving the internal kinematics from the floor of the car upwards, with the clear objective of freeing up space for the Venturi channels.
Obviously this choice also led to a redesign of the gearbox hydraulics, which caused a big problem in the C42 during the day of filming in Fiorano .
Luckily for those of Hinwill , the Swiss team did well to take advantage of the shakedown with the C42, because otherwise this problem would have been discovered during the first hours of the pre-season tests at the Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunya, with the loss of time that all this would have entailed.
Alfa Romeo technicians, thanks to discovering the gearbox hydraulic problem so long in advance, had plenty of time to fix the leak.
In this way, the Swiss team will be able to face the pre-season tests more calmly, where Guanyu Zhou will be able to make his debut at the wheel of the C42.
