Alfa Romeo Formula One driver Valtteri Bottas can’t explain his pace in Azerbaijan: “Even Williams was faster at the end of the race “
It was a disappointing weekend in Azerbaijan for Valtteri Bottas and the Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team. The Finn was beaten for the first time by teammate Guanyu Zhou in qualifying, but Bottas also lacked pace in the race in Baku, meaning he travels home without points for the first time this season despite crossing the finish line
Bottas can’t explain his pace at all: “I wish I knew, but it almost felt like there was something fundamentally wrong. We were doing such slow lap times that even Williams was faster at the end of the race and that’s not where we should be.”
But the Finn also saw no sting against his own teammate Zhou in the race. The Chinese, who started ahead of Bottas, managed to overtake his teammate after a tyre change on the track before retiring with reliability problems.
Bottas: Nothing worked from Saturday onwards
When asked why Zhou was doing so much better, Bottas had no answer. “I had no chance at all against Zhou’s lap times, he was in a league of his own and was almost a second faster than me, which is quite strange.”
“It felt like we lost grip at the rear from Friday to Saturday. It’s a bit strange because with the parts we changed, the rear should have been stronger. So we need to find out what went wrong. “
“We changed from the old package to the new one for Saturday and since then there have been problems with the behaviour of the car. So we’ll look at that and I’m pretty sure we’ll find something. “
Bottas: Has been overtaken from all sides
At the same time, Bottas is also sure that it has nothing to do with the very strong porpoising on all the cars in Baku: “I don’t think so, because it’s the same package as in Barcelona and we could drive the car as low as we wanted here. I don’t have any answers at the moment, it’s something we’ll have to find out before Montreal because there’s clearly a lack of pace. “
“It really didn’t make any difference which tyre we were on. I already had the feeling yesterday that the tyres didn’t work for a single lap. I was just being overtaken by cars. They were getting close to me at the end of the lap and because we have quite a big wing compared to the others, we were quite vulnerable.”
Ahead of the next race in Canada in just a week’s time, the Alfa Romeo team will have some fires to put out as the cause of Guanyu Zhou’s defect needs to be addressed alongside Bottas’ problems. Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto confirmed after the race that the failure was not due to the Ferrari engine but was caused “internally within the team” at Alfa Romeo.
Vasseur sure: Zhou would have finished in the points
“It’s so frustrating not to finish today,” the Chinese driver expressed his disappointment. “But I want to look at my positive performance. Until the problem, my race was really good. I didn’t make any mistakes, was competitive and was in the points. The pace was strong, which would have given us a good result.”
“What happened is unfortunate, but the most important thing now is that we as a team solve this problem for the future so we don’t miss opportunities like this again. We will look into the problem in detail and make sure we come back stronger,” Zhou said.
“We end Sunday here in Baku with a sense of disappointment as our run of consecutive points finishes comes to an end after five good races,” summed up team principal Frederic Vasseur. “It was a big blow for us that Zhou retired today with a technical problem. “
“Until then he had shown an excellent performance, without a single mistake and would have surely scored points. He would have deserved a good result today, but at least we can look at his performance knowing that he is on the way up.”
“Valtteri had a difficult race and we need to analyse what went wrong. We were not able to get performance out of the car throughout the weekend. We need to address this before Montreal to make sure we return to the level we have been driving at this season,” explained Vasseur.