It was a disappointing weekend in Azerbaijan for Valtteri Bottas and the Alfa Romeo Formula One team. The Finn was beaten by his teammate Guanyu Zhou for the first time in qualifying, but Bottas also lacked the pace in the race in Baku, meaning that for the first time this season he travels home without any points despite crossing the finish line.
Bottas cannot explain his pace at all: “I wish I knew, but it almost felt like something was fundamentally wrong. We drove such slow lap times that even Williams was faster at the end of the race and that’s where we should be Not be.”
But even against his own teammate Zhou, the Finn didn’t see a trick in the race. The Chinese, who started in front of Bottas, was able to overtake his team-mate on the track after changing tires before retiring with reliability issues.
When asked why Zhou was doing so much better, Bottas has no answer: “I had no chance against Zhou’s lap times at all, 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 swapped out, the rear should have been stronger. So we have to find out what went wrong.”
“We switched from the old package to the new one for Saturday and we’ve had issues with the behavior of the car ever since. So we’re going to look at that and I’m pretty sure we’ll find something.”
Bottas: Porpoising not the reason
At the same time, Bottas is also sure that it has nothing to do with the very strong porpoising on all cars in Baku: “I don’t think so because it’s the same package as in Barcelona and we were able to drive the car so low here that as we wanted. I don’t have any answers at the moment, it’s something we need to find out before Montreal because there’s clearly a lack of pace.”
“It really didn’t make any difference what tire we were running on. I already had the feeling yesterday that the tires didn’t work for a single lap. I was just being passed by cars. They came close to me at the end of the lap and there we have a pretty big wing compared to the others, we were pretty vulnerable.”
Zhou: “It’s so frustrating not to finish today”
Before the next race in Canada in just a week, the Alfa Romeo team has to put out some fires because, in addition to the problems at Bottas, the cause of Guanyu Zhou’s defect also has to be fixed. 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.
“It’s so frustrating not to finish today,” said the disappointed Chinese. “But I want to look at my positive performance. Up 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 that we don’t miss such chances anymore. We will study the problem in detail and make sure we come back stronger,” like Zhou.
Team boss Vasseur praises Zhou
“We end Sunday here in Baku with a feeling of disappointment as our run of consecutive points finishes comes to an end after five good races,” said 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 certainly have scored points. He deserved a good result today but at least we can look at his performance with the knowledge that he is on the way up. “
“Valtteri had a difficult race and we need to analyze what went wrong. We weren’t able to get performance out of the car all weekend. We need to address that before Montreal to make sure we get back to the level we were at that we have raced this season,” explains Vasseur.