Alfa Romeo C42 first pictures of wet shakedown

Photos emerged on Autosport's social media of the Swiss team's new car to be campaigned by their two new drivers, Finnish veteran Valtteri Bottas and Chinese rookie Guanyu Zhou.

The car was decked out in grey test camouflage livery, shod with wet tyres on what is a rainy day in the area.

Autosport reports that former Mercedes F1 driver Bottas was on duty in the Alfa Romeo C42 around midday in Italy, wearing a black helmet making use of the 'filming day' teams are allocated ahead of each season.

22-year-old Zhou is the only rookie on the 2022 grid while Bottas, ten years his senior, has 178 Grand Prix starts on his CV and will be looked on to lead the team after they ditched Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi, the latter retired as the former move on the Formula E.

Bottas will bring experience from Mercedes to the midfield team that will be looking for opportunities to move up the order in this new era of F1, designed to level the playing field which increasingly was tilted aways from teams such as the one founded by Peter Sauber.

The team reported from the shakedown: "The Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN 2022 contender, the C42, completed a successful shakedown at Fiorano Circuit today.

"The C42, in a special camouflage livery, took to the track for the first time just after 11 am to perform system checks.

"In wintry weather, with rain lashing down on the track, Valtteri Bottas completed the first outing of the car watched by Team Principal, Frédéric Vasseur; Technical Director, Jan Monchaux; and team-mate, Guanyu Zhou."

The official Alfa Romeo C42 launch is scheduled for 27 February, two days after the first F1 pre-season test in at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya from 23 to 25 this month.

The 2022 F1 championship is set to start with the Bahrain Grand Prix on 20 March the opening round of a record 22-season for the sport.