New Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake Team Representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi spoke on his delight with a points finish in the season-opener of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season in Bahrain.
Despite reaching Qualifying Two and starting in a fairly good position, Zhou Guanyu was unable to build on the evident pace in the car after a combination of a poor start and getting stuck in a DRS train. However, despite the disappointing result, Zhou was able to take the fastest lap of the race away from the team’s rival BWT Alpine F1 Team on the final lap.
Valtteri Bottas had a highly impressive race recording a points finish for the tenth consecutive time at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Bottas had a great opening lap pushing himself into the top ten, and after defending from Pierre Gasly on his Alpine debut, he was able to finish eighth pushing Alfa Romeo up to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
“The team did a really good job tonight and we can be satisfied with the final result, which shows our continuous progress and the value of the work we did during pre-season testing: we were in the top five teams for the whole of the race, and we finished ahead of McLaren and Alpine, which is as much as we could have hoped to get tonight,“ Bravi said.
“It was a good collective effort: the drivers did well in the car, with the added team-work contribution of Zhou setting the fastest time at the very end; the strategic choices and the pit-stops were really good, and all together we contributed to the four points we bring home. This result is in line with what we were expecting following last week’s testing and the data we got in practice.
“We also owe a big ‘thank you’ to the team back in Hinwil, who were instrumental in giving us a car we could fight with, and our key technical partners, Ferrari. Tonight was a good start, but there’s still a lot of work to do: we have to keep pushing to develop our car, as the battle we are in this season is going to be an exciting one.”
