Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake returned to track action after the summer break during practice for the Dutch Grand Prix.

On the challenging Zandvoort Circuit, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu went through a busy programme of testing on their C43s, with solid and promising indications coming from their on-track work.

The data collected today will help the team's engineers as they fine-tune the cars ahead of tomorrow's crucial qualifying session.

Valtteri Bottas: "It's a nice feeling to be back on track, especially on such a challenging and intense track. This is a tight circuit, with not much space and lots of sand off-line, which could make it interesting in qualifying, when you need to give others a bit of space. It was important to hit the ground running, and the first feeling with the car isn't bad: we know that, on such a short track, margins will be small but I think we're there or thereabout, with top-ten speed. There's still work to do, of course: not just on qualifying trim but also in terms of race pace. We know we need to execute our job to perfection to maximise our qualifying position, but we can be in the mix for a good result."

Zhou Guanyu: "The first feeling with the track was alright: we lost a bit of time in FP1 with some technical checks, but we recovered all lost ground with a clean FP2, so we are in a good place going forward. There's some fine-tuning to do, as always, and the field is in such a small range that one or two tenths can make a massive difference: but the car made a step forward from the first to the second session so I think there is potential. The aim in qualifying will be to fight for Q3: tomorrow's session will be tricky, given the characteristics of the track, but we are in with a shot."

Check out our Friday gallery from Zandvoort here.