‘Not fast enough today’: Valtteri Bottas gives his verdict on a disappointing qualifying session
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Valtteri Bottas
At the end of an exciting qualifying session, it was Max Verstappen who took pole position, narrowly edging out Charles Leclerc (+0.021) and Carlos Sainz (+0.092). Unfortunately for Valtteri Bottas, the session ended much earlier, back in Q1. After his run of not being eliminated in Q1 for 148 straight races ended in Belgium, it’s now been twice in a row that he has had to settle for one.
Valtteri Bottas will start the race P16 (barring any late penalties for a driver) and it wasn’t much better for his teammate, Zhou Guanyu either, who will start P14. Commenting on his qualifying session, Bottas said: “The feeling with the car wasn’t too bad, but we’re still lacking a bit of pace and grip to be higher up on the grid. We tried everything with the setup, but what we could find was not fast enough today.”
Bottas will now turn his focus to maximizing his result in the race, where he says he will try his best: “We expected this compound to be a one-lap tyre in qualifying, and that is what we have been focusing on with our run plan today. It’s been quite a tough weekend so far, but there’s still a race ahead of us. It’s going to be a challenge, no doubt, but we will try our best and see what we can find.”
A disappointing run of races for Alfa Romeo
It was a fantastic start to the season for Alfa Romeo. The Italian team had only scored 13 points for the entirety of the 2021 season. That changed in the first race of the new season, as both drivers finished in the points, taking home 9 points. For quite some time, Valtteri Bottas looked in with a shot for a best-of-the-rest finish, but then, it all fell away.
Zhou Guanyu had already suffered retirements on many occasions, but since Silverstone, that now seems to be affecting Bottas as well. Like, Ferrari, its engine supplier, Alfa Romeo has also been affected by mechanical issues, and so has the other Ferrari-powered team, Haas.
Since they finished 7th and 8th in Canada, Alfa Romeo have not scored a single point, and Bottas has also retired three times. It has been another disappointing weekend (as of yet) for the team, and even though Bottas has performed as well as could be expected from him on most occasions, they have rather fallen away from the midfield battle.
Alfa Romeo, like Mercedes earlier, are in a bit of a No Man’s Land. Not close enough to the ones in front, and not close enough to the ones below them. However, unlike Mercedes, they are certainly closer to the bottom four teams than the top teams, and they risk potentially falling into their clutches if results don’t improve.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)