24/04/2022
NEWS STORY
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN delivered a strong performance as the team capped off a successful weekend with a fine fifth place by Valtteri Bottas. Team-mate, Zhou Guanyu, fought well to recover from a pitlane start after yesterday's retirement, and finished in 15th place.
The ten points added to our tally, in conjunction with the two from yesterday's Sprint, lift the team to a total of 25 and fifth place in the constructors' championship.
Frederic Vasseur, Team Principal: "It has been a strong weekend from the team and to bring home 12 points between yesterday and today is a deserved reward. We delivered upgrades that worked well, a brilliant job by the team at home, and the crew were incredible both on Friday and Saturday night, with two rebuild jobs they undertook with strong spirit. Our race today was positive: Valtteri had really good pace and was able to fight for P4 until the final lap; Zhou always had a difficult job on his hands after yesterday's crash, but did well to recover from a pitlane start to finish 15th with some good overtakes on the way. There are so many positives we can take away from this weekend, not just in terms of the result but also in the way we went about our business, and we can definitely aspire to do even better in the next few races."
Valtteri Bottas: "It was a fun race for me today! It's always good to get points, we had a strong race in a car that felt really good. I am happy with how everything went, even though we lost a bit of time in the pit-stop, but we bring home ten points today so we'll take it. I had a bit of a scare at the beginning of the race, when I couldn't avoid Ricciardo when he tangled with Sainz, but luckily we didn't have any damage. The car had good pace, especially once we went on the mediums, and only at the very end, when I caught George [Russell] I had some graining on my rear right that cost me performance. The team is working really well, there's a good atmosphere and it's nice to see the upgrades we brought to the track worked. There's still a lot of work to do and many races ahead of us, so we can still improve and have some fun weekends."
Zhou Guanyu: "Not the result I wanted today, but there are still a lot of positives from me to take out of this weekend: not just the performance I showed over the three days, but also how I got up to speed quickly in my first Sprint race. The weekend started better than expected and I had a good qualifying, but yesterday really compromised our final result. It was always going to be hard to make it into the top ten from the pit lane, especially as today it was quite difficult to pass, and once I got past the Williams, the gap to the cars ahead was too big. The rest of my race was quite uneventful, but I can still look at the things I learned in difficult conditions and make sure I get back stronger in the next races."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Imola, here.