Despite Alfa Romeo’s poor pace on Friday, Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou are not worried: Updates have been withheld for practice
Alfa Romeo were not far up the timesheets in Baku on Friday. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou were only 15th and 16th in practice in Azerbaijan, almost two seconds behind the leaders. But that is not representative, Bottas says, and is banking on new parts that the team will not use until Saturday.
“I don’t think that’s a true picture of where we are,” says the Finn. “The fact is that we don’t necessarily have the best parts on the car yet. And on my last lap I was four tenths ahead, but then I locked the wheels and lost all the time.”
“So even then I would have been quite a bit closer,” he points out. “On top of that, there are the improvements we can make for tomorrow. So it’s going to be extremely tight. We made quite a few set-up changes today and it got much better towards the end. “
Alfa Romeo holding back parts
Alfa Romeo, who are competing in a special livery this weekend, have brought only a limited range of updates to Baku and saved them for Friday as they did not want to risk any damage on the narrow roads.
“As far as I know they are here, but we don’t have too many of them,” Bottas said of the updates. “There is always a risk on these street circuits. I think hopefully this will give us a little step forward. But we also need to find more than that. “
“I’m sure we can do it and I know we can improve the set-up and everything else. It’s quite a sensitive track, but if you get the set-up right, you can find a lot of lap time,” he says.
Especially as his racing team should have learnt from the not-so-pleasant Monaco weekend: “And if we get everything right for tomorrow, then I’m optimistic that we should be fighting for a position in Q3,” Bottas says. “And the race pace should be okay anyway, as always. “
Zhou only just slower than Bottas
Team-mate Zhou was 0.149 seconds slower than Bottas on Friday and is also putting his faith in the new parts. “We still need to find some speed, but I’m quite confident that we have a few things we can put on the car tomorrow that should be a reasonable improvement,” said the Chinese.
Monaco had been difficult, “but we found out what happened – but of course it’s too late now,” he said. “This weekend we have slow corners again, even though it’s a different layout. But I felt pretty comfortable in the car.”
“We have a clear picture of where we need to improve and that will just bring a lot more speed,” the Chinese insists. “So if that fits tomorrow, we’ll be back fighting with everyone else for that midfield group. “
