The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix had presented itself as the ideal opportunity forAlfa Romeo to be able to replicate the excellent result obtained in Bahrain, where the Swiss team had left Sakhir with both drivers in the points. The story, on the other hand, was completely different in that of Jeddah, where the objectives of Valtteri Bottas they collided with the bitterness of a withdraw for a cooling problem, while Guanyu Zhou – 11 ° at the finish – experienced a nightmare race with ben two penalties suffered, the second of which inflicted by the Race Direction for not having served the first correctly.
A weekend therefore to forget for the Swiss manufacturer and for Bottas himself, who until his final return to the pits was still fighting for a place in the top 10: “It is a shame to retire from what had been a really good race up to that point – Finnish number 77 explained – especially since we were trying to get at least the P6. The engine temperatures continued to rise, but we will investigate the reasons that generated this problem; we preferred to retire because we didn’t want to lose the engine. That’s how racing goes, now we need to make sure we fix any issues and move on. Looking at the positives – he added – the car was really good. We took another step forward compared to the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and taking advantage of some close battles: now we will make sure to be competitive in Australia too “.
Who instead finished the race was Zhou, despite the despair for the double penalty inflicted on him: the Chinese, after returning to the pits to serve 5 seconds of Stop & Go following contact with Albon, he was again penalized for the direct responsibility of the mechanics, who lifted the car without changing tires, a move not allowed by the regulations. At that point, the management then forced him to a Drive Through: “I want to think this has been a good experience in terms of gaining more confidence with street circuits in Formula One – commented Zhou – it was useful, but overall the race was certainly far from ideal: we had the anti-stall that activated at the first corner, so we will have to understand what happened. I had made a good recovery from P18 and were looking to take home a few points again, but the drive-through made us slide far behind. We hope for a quieter race in Australia, the car responds well and we can be competitive again ”.
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