Boss admits lightweight 2022 Alfa ’extreme’

Aspects of Alfa Romeo’s car design for 2022 are "extreme", technical boss Jan Monchaux has admitted.

The Sauber-run, Swiss based team was the only outfit initially resorting to radical camouflage measures to hide the details of its car for the all-new technical rules.

Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko thinks the car is the only one in pitlane, with the possible exemption of McLaren, that meets the original car-plus-driver weight limit of 795kg.

There are claims the official minimum weight will therefore be raised by 3kg for the start of the season in Bahrain.

But Monchaux explains that Alfa Romeo made the decision to go "extreme" in various areas with the 2022 car almost exclusively "because of the influence of the weight".

However, the car did not get a smooth birth at the first test in Barcelona, with Valtteri Bottas, Guanyu Zhou and tester Robert Kubica collecting just 176 laps in total.

"I don’t have a crystal ball," said Monchaux, "but normally we are pretty good in terms of reliability.

"We have some issues to fix," he is quoted by the Dutch publication Formule 1, "but I’m pretty sure we’ll fix them.

"As for the mechanical issues, I’d rather we have them now than during the season," Monchaux added.