“He was in another league,” Valtteri Bottas admits Guanyu Zhou outclassed him in Baku
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Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou
Valtteri Bottas has been incredible at Alfa Romeo and plays a very different role in the team when compared to his role at Mercedes. While he was playing second to Lewis Hamilton last year, the Finn has been more of a leader and a mentor to his team mate, Gunayu Zhou. Valtteri is definitely liking his time with the new team as he already has racked up a total of 40 points and finds himself 8th in the driver standings.
We know how difficult it is to score your first points in F1 but Guanyu Zhou has wasted no time in securing his first points. The Chinese driver, in his rookie season, has caught the attention of one and all. With Valtteri Bottas as his team, he’s making full use of the opportunity. Zhou went a step forward as he outshone his team mate who just couldn’t live with the lap times he was setting.
Zhou was able to get comfortably into Q2 while Bottas barely got into it. It was a race where we saw the Chinese driver come into his own and could have definitely scored some more points provided he didn’t have to retire out of the race due to technical issue. In what was a terrible weekend for Ferrari and Ferrari powered cars due to the reliability issues, Alfa Romeo and Guanyu Zhou had to face the brunt too.
Valtteri Bottas impressed with Gunayu Zhou’s performance at the Azerbaijan GP
Despite Zhou not being able to score points, Valtteri Bottas was definitely impressed by the rookie’s performance. Talking to Motorsport, he said, “It almost feels like something is fundamentally wrong because we were so off the expected lap times and pace – even Williams were faster than us at the end of the race, which is not where our car should be.”
“I had no chance to match Zhou’s lap times today – he was in another league, almost one second faster, which for me is quite strange.”
“Both cars are certainly the same configuration. I would say it’s the same set-up, everything was the same. There’s something that’s not working as expected,” as reported by planetf1.
The signs are promising for Alfa Romeo with Guanyu Zhou also putting in some impressive performances. But, they need to get on top of their reliability issues if they want to stay in the midfield battle with McLaren and Alpine.
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