For only the second time in 2022, Valtteri Bottas failed to score points, with the Finn finishing eleventh in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a tough weekend for the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver.
After being eliminated in Q2 in Saturday’s Qualifying session at the Baku City Circuit, Bottas felt there was something ‘fundamentally wrong’ with his car, and as a result was never truly in contention for the points on Sunday. It was just the second time in eight races where he did not score points, after his retirement from the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in March.
Bottas says he has faith in the team that they can find what just went wrong in Azerbaijan ahead of next weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, where he will be aiming to return to the top ten once more.
“We came here hunting for points and we leave with none, so I am obviously not very pleased about how our weekend went,” said Bottas. “Today it felt like a very long race as we were lacking pace: I believe there was something fundamentally wrong with the car, something we need to investigate.
“We will need to figure out what exactly happened before we get to Montreal, but I am convinced we will understand it and address it. Other than the outright pace, we did well as a team in terms of strategy and race execution, but that wasn’t enough to bring home the points.
“I feel quite sorry for Zhou as he was doing a really good race prior to his retirement: today was not our day, but I am looking forward to Canada next week. It’s been a while since we raced there and it’ll be nice to be back.”
“I had good pace and I know we could have brought home a good result” – Zhou Guanyu
Team-mate Zhou Guanyu was having a good race in Baku, but another mechanical issue saw his day in retirement, his third failure to finish in four races after previous retirements in Miami and Spain.
The Chinese driver appeared to have the measure on Bottas for much of the weekend in Azerbaijan and believed points were for the taking, but all his hard work was undone when he was called back into the pits by his engineers to retire.
Whilst disappointed with his retirement, Zhou says he can take positives away from the weekend, and he hopes that the pace he was able to show prior to his retirement can continue into the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.
“It’s frustrating not to finish today, but I want to focus on the positives of my performance,” said Zhou. “Until the issue, my race had gone really well: I didn’t do any mistake, I was competitive and I was running in the points.
“I had good pace and I know we could have brought home a good result. What happened is unfortunate, but the most important now is that we, as a team, solve this issue for the future so that we stop missing out on the opportunities we have.
“We’ll investigate what the issue is in detail and we’ll make sure we do come back stronger.”
Zhou Guanyu was an early retirement in Azerbaijan – Credit: DPPI