Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake endured a tough qualifying day at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with rain influencing both FP3 and the grid-setting session.

Valtteri Bottas set the 15th time in difficult conditions that prevented him from properly extracting the car's potential and repeating the performances shown during earlier practice. Teammate, Zhou Guanyu, suffered a technical issue at the start of Q1 which hindered his chance to make it through, ultimately finishing 20th.

Despite this setback, the focus now, for the team both at the track and back in Hinwil, will be on figuring out the best race plan to get back right in the battle in tomorrow's Canadian Grand Prix.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: "There is no denying that today has been a disappointing qualifying session for us: we have clearly seen during FP3 that we had a chance not just to make it into Q2, but as well to move up even further, but today has not been our day: Zhou had an issue right at the start of Q1, which was then solved, allowing him to still take part in the session. Valtteri, on the other hand, made it into Q2 but struggled to get the most out of the slick tyres in the changeable conditions. All of our efforts will now go into investigating what happened today, and figuring out why we couldn't get the best out of the car. Still, tomorrow is a new day: despite the starting positions not being ideal for neither of our drivers, we have seen plenty of times in the past how anything can happen in this race. We must focus on tomorrow and choose another aggressive strategy that can allow us to exploit any opportunity this circuit can offer."

Valtteri Bottas: "I still believe the top ten could have been achievable today, especially looking at our lap times in FP3. Unfortunately, we have been a bit unlucky with these changeable conditions. Of course, I would've preferred to be out there fighting in Q3, but tomorrow is a new day, and we have a chance to recover from today. All through the weekend so far, our car felt like it could get in the top ten, our pace is there, especially in the dry. We'll look into our performance overnight and get ready to climb up the grid tomorrow."

Zhou Guanyu: "Qualifying has been quite frustrating for me; somehow, I lost the drive and found myself with no power. I had a lot of anti-stall, and at first I couldn't even communicate with the team. I still somehow managed to bring the car back to the garage, and after a while, I went out again. Overall, it hasn't been a clean session from my side: I was lacking grip, sliding quite a lot. We are yet to figure out what has actually happened, but we will make sure to investigate it to get it resolved properly. Still, nothing is lost: hopefully, we'll figure it out ahead of tomorrow, and try to get back in the higher part of the grid."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Montreal here.