Valtteri Bottas: “I couldn’t close in on Gasly”

It was a tough race for Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN, as they found themselves with both cars not scoring points at the FIA Formula 1 World Championship Singapore Grand Prix.

Valtteri Bottas had a poor qualifying session, that saw him knocked out of Qualifying One and start fifteenth on the grid, after George Russell started from the pitlane. Despite showing good pace through parts of the race, he was unable to bring home any points, which is disappointing for the team considering the pace they showed on Friday. The wet conditions didn’t help the Italian team either, with their worst performances mostly coming in the wet this season.

Despite gaining multiple positions, most were down to other drivers. Bottas is hoping that the team can quickly get past this result and concentrate on the Japanese Grand Prix.

“Considering where we started today, we probably got as much as we could. Of course, it’s always frustrating when you finish just one position away from the points, but at least we avoided any mistakes and kept it on track.

“Towards the end, the soft tyres were starting to drop and I couldn’t close in on Gasly, but I think it was a good call to try going with them in the second stint today: I don’t think any other compound would have given us a better result.

“We can still take a few positives from the weekend: we showed good pace on Friday, and we have some upgrades coming to Japan; our car has proved to be working a bit better in dry conditions, so let’s hope for favourable weather in Suzuka to kick back right away.”

Zhou Guanyu: “He [Latifi] decided to fully close the space and put me into the wall”

It was a night to forget for Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu, who saw his race end on Lap Seven. The Chinese driver recently signed an extension to stay with the Italian outfit for the 2023 season alongside Botta,s and would have hoped for a better showing on the wet streets of Singapore.

Zhou attempted to overtake Williams Racing‘s Nicholas Latifi, and the latter squeezed him into the wall causing them both to retire with terminal damage. Latifi received a five-place grid penalty for the incident leaving no blame on Zhou, but that was little consolation for the Chinese driver.

“It’s disappointing to finish a race with such a crash, there was not much I could do. I was side-by-side with Latifi in turn four, and he decided to fully close the space and put me into the wall. The damage to the suspension was terminal, he got a penalty for this incident but it’s not going to change much for me. It was not what we wanted, and it’s especially annoying as I think we had a decent pace.

We just move on from today and shift our focus to Suzuka: it’s a new chance for us to do well and I am looking forward to racing on that track.”​​​​​​​