Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake battled for the grid in front of a raucous home crowd in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.

Valtteri Bottas claimed a spot in Q2, eventually setting the 14th fastest time, two spots ahead of team-mate, Zhou Guanyu. These positions will give the team a fair shot at a spot in the top ten in tomorrow's race, a result that would delight the crowd of colleagues supporting the team from a dedicated grandstand on the home straight.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: "The team did a good job in recovering from a difficult Friday. We addressed some of the issues we had yesterday, when we couldn't find the right balance for the car and the pace was lacking. The team has been executing its game plan well, managing to handle car release times and the tyres effectively, and I reckon Valtteri's P14 is the most we were able to achieve today. Unfortunately, Zhou found traffic at the end of his preparation lap, meaning he couldn't get the most out of his time on track. Tomorrow won't be an easy race, but there is still a chance to do a further step forward, so it'll be crucial to nail the best strategy and be at our very best, maximising every opportunity. I am confident, if we repeat the job done today, that we can achieve that, and place ourselves back in the top ten. Finally, I would also like to congratulate Ferrari on scoring a pole position at our shared home race: it sure made the crowd happy, and I hope we will be able to contribute to the festive mood tomorrow."

Valtteri Bottas: "Qualifying has been a pretty straightforward job and to get a place in Q2 is a good result: the car felt decent with all tyre compounds, which was an advantage with the Alternative Tyre Allocation rules. Our pace hasn't been quite there earlier this weekend, but we made a step forward compared to practice: we are good on the straights, but we lost a little bit in the corners. I reckon the pace of our closest competitors is quite similar to ours, and hopefully we'll get to put up some good battles out there tomorrow to make up some ground. After all, this is Monza: races are often unpredictable here, and we might still have a chance climb up the grid and get into the top ten."

Zhou Guanyu: "We made a significant step forward, in particular between FP3 and Qualifying, compared to how we struggled yesterday: we could have been in Q2 but, unfortunately, I found traffic at the end of my launch lap, which ended up costing me too much time in sector one. It wasn't a clean lap, sadly, and we ended up going out in Q1. Tomorrow will be challenging, but we head into race day with a positive approach, ready to seize any opportunity that will come to us. We need to make the right calls and move forward in the field."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Monza here.