Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN kicked off its 2022 championship campaign with a busy, promising day of practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Valtteri Bottas completed the highest number of laps in FP2, making up for missing out on the first practice session with a technical issue; Zhou Guanyu, on his debut weekend, had a solid day with all box ticked on his programme. The team's engineers spring into action now, as they work with the drivers to optimise the car ahead of tomorrow's first qualifying session of the year.

Valtteri Bottas: "We recovered strongly from FP1, ending the day with an important session and plenty of laps, so I can say we saved the day. There's still lots to improve, like for everyone else so early in the season, but you can definitely tell the potential is there: in the running we did in the evening session, the car felt really nice, especially on high fuel. It feels we're not far off where we want to be, which is really positive. It will be interesting to see how it will be tomorrow, in qualifying, when everyone puts out everything they've got: now, however, it's time to look at the data we collected together with Zhou and the team and learn from it."

Zhou Guanyu: "It was a good day to start the season, all went very smoothly and, at least on my side, according to our programme. The car felt comfortable, although there are, of course, still a few things we need to improve. All feels still quite new to me and there's still something to explore before qualifying tomorrow. FP1 was quite tricky as the track conditions were challenging, but already in FP2 the evolution made it easier. What really mattered, however, was doing all we had on our plan for the day. It's a promising start for the weekend and I am looking forward to tomorrow."

Check out our Friday gallery from Bahrain, here.