Alfa Romeo becomes final F1 team to unveil livery for 2022

Alfa Romeo formally unveiled the C42 in an online launch on Sunday morning.

The livery maintains its traditional red and white colours, with the former more prominent for this year.

The Swiss outfit decided to run an interim livery during the first test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya while running its 2022-spec car.

It was a difficult test for Alfa Romeo as it managed 175 laps. Only Haas completed fewer.

Alfa Romeo has an entirely new driver line-up for this season with former Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas teaming up with F2 graduate Guanyu Zhou.

Bottas’ Barcelona test was blighted with reliability gremlins as he completed only 54 laps in the C42, setting the slowest time of the test (excluding Alfa Romeo test driver Robert Kubica).

Zhou fared better as he set the 15th best time of the Barcelona test, totalling 112 laps.

The Chinese driver is the only rookie on the grid for this season after spending the last few years in Formula 2, finishing third in the standings in 2021.

Alfa Romeo finished ninth in the constructors’ championship in 2021, slipping behind Williams despite often having a more competitive car throughout the season.

With Bottas’ vast experience and proven race-winning pedigree, Alfa Romeo will be hoping to improve on ninth in the championship.

Speaking at the launch, team principal Frederic Vasseur said: "The start of the season is always an exciting time, one in which we see the fruit of the work of hundreds of people over a long period of time. The C42 is a car we look forward to seeing racing, not just because it is the first we built in this new regulations cycle, one in which racing should be closer and more thrilling, but because we have the utmost confidence in this car helping the team make a big step forward towards the front of the grid.”

Alfa Romeo will get another chance to get some important mileage under its belt when pre-season testing resumes in Bahrain on March 10-12.