Alfa Romeo have revealed which teams they are aiming to challenge after a strong performance at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Valtteri Bottas claimed the squad's first points of the 2023 F1 season by ending the race in P8, while Zhou Guanyu finished outside of the points but set the fastest lap in the latter stages of the event, taking a point away from their rivals. Xevi Pujolar, Head of Trackside Engineering at the squad, feels that Alfa achieved most of their targets during the weekend. "The only thing we would say [that we didn't achieve] is that we wanted to be in Q3," Pujolar told media, including RacingNews365.com . "We were close, we didn't achieve that, but we put both cars in 12 and 13 [on the grid], and then [we were] fighting for the points. "Our target was [to battle with] Alpine and McLaren, to have a good pace in the race, to have a good reliability, and I think we hit all these targets. "We were ahead of Alpine and McLaren, we had two cars at the end of the race with reliability, and Zhou [still] contributed to the team just getting this fastest lap, so we removed that point from Alpine. "If we can do like this every race, I will be very pleased."
Alfa Romeo identify main rivals
When asked if Alfa can make enough progress to challenge Aston Martin in 2023, Pujolar suggested that the team's main targets are McLaren and Alpine. "At the moment I would say it's more Alpine and McLaren but, for sure, we will try our best to develop as much as we can," he explained. "We have to see, I don't know what will be their development rate at the front or if they [will] have other issues. "At the moment we will just focus on ourselves, trying to develop as much as possible against what we see with the problems that we have or that we want to improve. "Let's see what we can achieve. But, realistically at the moment, I would say we focus more towards Alpine and McLaren."
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