Martin Brundle spots a problem with Alfa Romeo’s new C43 livery

Alfa Romeo have unveiled their new car for the 2023 season but former racer turned pundit Martin Brundle believes there is a problem with it.

In a change from last season’s offering, Alfa went for a predominantly black car with a shade of the company’s red across the top.

The new livery, which was unveiled at the team’s Switzerland base on Tuesday, received the approval of the fans but one expert believes there could be a problem when it takes to the track.

Brundle has been a long-time pundit on Sky Sports F1 so knows what he is talking about when it comes to how cars will look both on the track and on people’s TVs, and believes the black plus the carbon finish will make it an issue.

“Love the back of the rear wing,” Brundle tweeted. “This new low weight carbon finish is becoming very prevalent in F1, weight limit drops by 2kgs this year and most teams were struggling before.

“But this car will be hard to see on TV or trackside on an overcast day.”

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It is not the first time a dark car has been predicted to cause problems with Haas changing their livery part way through the 2017 season after they found it difficult to see on the television.

“We reviewed how you see it on television and it looked that on the side, the Haas, you could not really see it,” Steiner told Motorsport.com in 2017.

“So the creative guys came up with some ideas until we found what Gene [Haas] liked and that is why it changed. It is very simple.

“It is a little bit of a different style. To make it more visible they went through a few iterations and they thought the white would stand out more, plus making it [the logo] bigger would help as well.”

The subject will be of particular interest to those who have sponsored the team considering in their eyes an F1 car is a 200mph billboard. Should they, but more importantly the fans, be unable to read the sponsors name as the car goes by then they will rightly feel aggrieved at having shelled out a considerable amount for that honour.

The 2023 car is the final one of Alfa’s sponsorship of the Sauber team with Audi ready to take over from 2026 onwards.