Valtteri Bottas draws a positive first conclusion about the Formula 1 tests in Bahrain. Although the Finn “only” finished twelfth, he was still quite satisfied: “It feels good, but I don’t know how good the other cars are, but I can definitely feel some improvements compared to last year,” he says .
But one thing was particularly important to him today: “I would say the most positive thing today was that we didn’t have a single problem, which is a big difference compared to last year’s tests, so at least we started on the right foot and a decent one Achieved mileage, which is very important at this point.”
Bottas was able to do 71 laps on Thursday, a total of 384 kilometers. Things looked very different last year: Back then, the Finn only managed 23 laps and just over 100 kilometers on the first day in Barcelona – on the second day it was only 21 laps.
“We had a lot of problems last year,” he notes. “The most important thing is that you can get kilometers on the first day and that’s how you learn about the car, what set-ups work and what doesn’t, how the new tires feel – all those things.”
So he is satisfied with the first day. The performance itself – teammate Guanyu Zhou finished eighth, 0.886 seconds behind – is a “good starting point” for the coming season. “I could feel some improvements,” says Bottas.
Better balance than in the C42
“The rear of the car has definitely become more stable, which was a weakness last year, especially in the faster corners,” he says as a plus. However, Alfa Romeo still has to work on the balance, especially at low speeds. “We’re struggling a bit with front wheel lockup and understeer,” he says. “But nothing we can’t solve.”
In 2022, the C42 was quite difficult to adjust. You usually had understeer in slow corners, but oversteer in fast corners. “So it was always a compromise. But now the balance window for low and high speeds is better matched. So it’s more predictable,” says the Finn.
“Last year we were stuck a lot with the set-up but now we feel like we have more opportunities to explore the mechanical things.”
But you still have to take into account the topic of porpoising, which, according to Bottas, has not yet disappeared, even if it is better than last year: “You still have to make a few compromises when it comes to voting.”
get problems under control?
But that’s a minor matter for him on Thursday. It was important to him that Alfa Romeo seems to have got the reliability problems of the previous season under control: “I have the feeling that all the main problems that we had last year in the chassis area were well identified and a lot of the concepts were changed, like for example the cooling, which we had several problems with,” he says.
“And at least today shows that we can do more than two race distances without any problems. That’s good. So I’m confident that we will do better than last year. And of course we had some problems with the Ferrari last year -Motor, but not yet. But it’s still too early. Time will tell.”
On Friday, Guanyu Zhou will be the only pilot in action. Valtteri Bottas drives the entire Saturday for this.