Valtteri Bottas has had to make do with a new race engineer since Miami, which is making his weekend more difficult – but he emphasizes: “It’s getting better “
For Valtteri Bottas, the Formula 1 weekend in Miami is not an easy one. Before the event, the Finn had to live with the fact that Sauber replaced his race engineer Alex Chan with Steve Petrik, which Bottas now has to deal with unintentionally. And that is still causing some difficulties in Miami
“For sure it’s getting better and better, but of course it’s not an easy weekend,” says Bottas. “It’s his first time as a race engineer and we haven’t spent that much time together beforehand.”
That doesn’t necessarily make life any easier for Bottas in a Sauber that is already not particularly competitive. That’s why he was anything but enthusiastic about the change, as we heard at the press conference on Thursday.
“The race engineer is always a really important person for the drivers, so this is a pretty big change,” he says.
But of course the veteran is trying to come to terms with the new situation and accept it. And over time, he says, you get to know each other better and better, can work together better and also gain more experience. “And communication is very important, so of course we still have work to do.”
But: “It’s getting better,” Bottas confirms. “And we were finally able to adjust the set-up better. We made quite extensive changes to the set-up after the sprint and the car is now in a better window. “
In sporting terms, however, this only helped to a limited extent in qualifying because, as on the previous day, both Sauber cars had to retire after the first section. Guanyu Zhou finished a disappointing last, but Bottas just missed the cut in 16th place – by a hundredth of a second.
“It’s a shame that we didn’t make it through because it was only a hundredth of a second,” said the Finn, who had previously reached Q2 three times in a row and even made it into Q3 in qualifying and sprint qualifying in China.
“I had some traffic on my lap, which explains it a bit,” he says. “I think we should have got through.”
For the race, the Sauber driver expects another DRS move, but one in which he could have a difficult time from so far back. “Strategy will play an important role, and hopefully we’ll get off to a good start. “
