Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN’s Valtteri Bottas crossed the checkered flag at the Japanese Grand Prix in fifteenth place, having weathered “sketchy” conditions and a lack of visibility from the time the lights went out.
“The conditions were very difficult today, in particular at the beginning of the race. The first couple of laps were quite risky, mostly because visibility wasn’t great from my position, it was a bit sketchy.”
Overtaking was a main point of difficulty for Bottas, who said that he was unable to find his way around Kevin Magnussen due to the wet conditions at the already tricky circuit.
“We seemed to have good pace, especially as the track dried out a bit, but unfortunately it was difficult to overtake today: I think most of the drivers struggled with that, which was a shame as I ended up stuck behind Magnussen for pretty much all of the race.”
Bottas said that in spite of the difficult race, he was pleased to have come near the top ten in qualifying with a twelfth place result on Saturday– a step up from recent weekends and something he looks to further improve upon into the last races of the season.
“We can still find some positives from this weekend: we were super close to getting into Q3 yesterday, so that’s good. It’s a small improvement, and we must aim for it for the final races of the season. Hopefully, we can build on that, and have a good qualifying in Austin in a few weeks, where we will also be bringing some additional upgrades on the car.”
“I have positives to take from the weekend, even though we didn’t score” – Zhou Guanyu
Team-mate Zhou Guanyu faced his share of challenges at the Japanese Grand Prix and ended up finishing in sixteenth place. He said that he did, however, learn a lot from the experience.
“I have positives to take from the weekend, even though we didn’t score. It was nice to see that we can still be so close and have good pace; furthermore, it being my first time in Suzuka, I learned a lot over the weekend.
“Overall, it was a typical Sunday with weather changes and very low visibility. At the start, I suffered a spin at the hairpin, meaning I had to come back from the bottom.”
When it came to a recovery strategy, Zhou said that the decision to stay on wets after the restart was not the right choice in hindsight, but was still proud to have come away with his first fastest lap in a Grand Prix.
“At the restart, there were only two ways to go: you either pitted on lap one to go on inters, or you tried to stay out hoping for more rain. I was quite far behind and there was a lot of spray coming my way from the cars in front, so I felt like the best option was to stay out on the wets. We did that, and when we saw the inters were clearly faster, I knew the gamble was lost: still, we gave it a try, and I got to gain my first-ever fastest lap for that.”
Looking ahead to the United States Grand Prix, Zhou is optimistic about the upgrades the team implemented in Japan, which they will continue to optimize in the weekends ahead.
“We can be quietly confident for the future: the upgrades we introduced this weekend are looking positive, but we still need some more time to properly understand them.”
