Alfa Romeo completed the fewest laps out of all 10 teams in the Barcelona test but Valtteri Bottas wants them to focus on the positives.
Bottas will have a different experience in F1 compared to what he got used to over the last six seasons. At Mercedes, he was a regular challenger for podiums, and won 10 races with the Brackley based outfit.
After the end of the 2021 season, he moved to Alfa Romeo to replace Kimi Raikkonen. At the Swiss team, he’s going to face a contrasting challenge. They are expected to be one of the back-markers this year, and their weak run in pre-season added to more gloom.
The Alfa Romeo name didn’t have the strongest of starts upon their return to F1 in 2019. They were never able to establish themselves as a consistent midfield team and the trend is set to continue this season as well.
The Hinwil based outfit enters 2022 with a completely different driver line-up consisting of Bottas and Guanyu Zhou. The latter becomes the first Chinese driver to ever land a full-time seat in the sport, and in a recent interview, Bottas vowed to help the rookie settle into F1.
At the first pre-season test in Barcelona last week, Alfa Romeo completed the fewest number of laps among all teams. This raised reliability concerns ahead of the start of the season. Despite their weak outing however, Bottas wants them to focus on the positives.
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Still in a very early stage of discovering the car, says Valtteri Bottas
Bottas wasn’t feeling all negative after his pre-season run in Catalunya last month. He insisted that the car has a lot of potential, and with the right amount of work, they can be much better.
“The nice feeling is that I definitely feel that there is potential,” he said. “Here is some strong areas in the car in certain type of corners.”
“But also, of course, I immediately noticed points to work on with the balance, with some of the behavior. But nothing that we shouldn’t be able to fix. It feels like we are still in very early stages of actually discovering the car.”
“For me it was quite limited running that we had. With two different tyre compounds, only with quite a very few set-up changes. So there’s still so much more to discover.”
“There’s work to do, I’m not saying anything against that. But also I feel like there is potential in this package and I’m looking forward to discover more about it with the team,” he concluded.
Bottas will next be behind the wheel of his C42 at the second pre-season testing in Bahrain on 10th March.
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