Bottas and Alfa Romeo think that the car had a problem in Baku

Performing well since the start of the season with Alfa Romeo, Valtteri Bottas experienced a major setback on the streets of Baku. To explain this underperformance, the Finnish driver and his team believe that his car had a serious issue.

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Rédigé par Par

For the first time this season, Valtteri Bottas was completely off the pace during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Eliminated in Q2 on Saturday, in 15th position and behind his teammate Guanyu Zhou, the Finn still managed to finish just outside of the points on Sunday thanks to the numerous retirements ahead of him.

A drop in performance noticed since the 3rd free practice session on Saturday morning, which corresponds to the moment when Bottas received the latest upgrades on his C42. For him, there is no doubt that the problem comes from there. « I would like to know, it’s almost as if something is fundamentally wrong because we were so far off the lap times and expected pace, even Williams was faster than us at the end of the race, which is not where our car should be. We switched from the old package to the new one on Saturday, and since then, the problem started with the car’s behavior. We will take a look, and I am quite confident that we will find something. »

« From Friday to Saturday, we had the impression of losing grip at the rear, which is a bit strange because with the parts we changed, it should have increased. We need to figure out what’s wrong. I had no chance of competing with Zhou’s lap times today, he was in another league, almost a second faster which is quite strange for me, » adds Bottas.

The track engineering manager of Alfa Romeo, Xavi Pujolar, confirms his doubts about the Finnish driver’s car 77. Since Saturday, we started to question Valtteri’s car. And today, it was clear that something was wrong. For now, we need to understand what it is, but we can see that something is not right.

Apart from his retirement in Saudi Arabia at the start of the season, Bakou marks Valtteri Bottas’ first non-points finish this year.

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