With ten retirements this season, Alfa Romeo brings up the rear in terms of reliability – This must change, says Valtteri Bottas
Valtteri Bottas sees reliability as Alfa Romeo’s biggest weakness at the moment and the key to getting back into the points. The team has not managed to do so since the Canadian Grand Prix in mid-June: Since then, there have been six races in a row without points.
Reliability has been a major problem: in the last four races, only one car saw the chequered flag, and with ten retirements, Alfa Romeo is the negative leader this season. In addition, there have been repeated problems in practice, which have cost Valtteri Bottas in particular valuable time.
He attributes the difficulties to “a bit of everything”. While the most recent problem was with the power unit at Zandvoort, at the beginning of the season it was mainly problems with the chassis that hindered the team. “That was partly because we didn’t get to drive that much in the winter,” says Bottas.
“I think we are on the right track with the chassis, but we still have work to do with the power unit,” he says. “In the last three races we had a reliability-related failure on the chassis side, which was the hydraulics, then we had a problem with the power unit and an accident on the second lap,” said the Finn.
“We just have to finish. I don’t know what else to say. “
But another problem, from his point of view, is that other teams such as McLaren or Alpine have done a better job of development and have so clearly overtaken Alfa Romeo. “They had more consistent updates,” he says. Alfa Romeo will perhaps bring something in Suzuka or Austin, “but I guess that’s it”.
And: Alfa Romeo was one of the few teams at the beginning that already operated at the weight limit. There was still something for the competition there. “I think many teams were overweight. But now they’ve dropped [the weight] and I think that’s had an impact as well.”
“We know that production speed is one of our weaknesses, which is a high priority for the team going forward. So we are well aware of that. “
But things won’t necessarily get any easier for Bottas at Monza this weekend: because he will be using new engine parts, he faces the threat of starting from the very back of the grid.