Valtteri Bottas continues to confirm himself as the true lighthouse of Alfa Romeo Sauber. The Finnish driver, who joined the Swiss team this year, is scoring points with impressive regularity and the fifth place currently occupied by the team in the Constructors is the result of the former Mercedes’ competitiveness.
Also in Spain Bottas showed a capital performance, but in this case the strategy adopted by Alfa Romeo Sauber was perhaps too conservative. Instead of going on three stops, Valtteri only made two tire changes, both with medium compound, which forced him to an excessively long final stint and made him retreat from fourth to sixth place.
Bottas did not hide his disappointment at the end of the race, but nevertheless underlined how the points obtained today are still important for the team.
“When you are in those positions and things are going well and you see something happening to the other cars then you think it could be your day, but today from a strategy point of view we took a risk. We faced too long a stint and the tires died in the end ”.
“We tried. Today we had the choice between being the best of others or trying something more. We tried something different but it didn’t work. The risk was minimal, however, since those behind us did not represent a threat ”.
Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo C42
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
“I don’t think we could have aimed for the podium, we didn’t have enough pace, but maybe it would have been possible with a shorter stint and with the problems Lewis had in the final. However we got some good points ”.
The performances shown by Alfa Romeo Sauber at the beginning of the season then prompted Vallteri to unbutton himself and covertly ask the team for greater aggression in strategies in the next rounds.
“Now we will have to speak at the briefing to analyze the strategy we have adopted, but at this stage we are limiting ourselves to scoring points. Perhaps in the future we will try to understand if we can risk something more ”.
The good performances seen in this weekend in Barcelona, which started with a problem with the Ferrari power unit accused on Friday, bodes well for Bottas for the next round in Monaco. The Finn underlined the goodness of the updates brought to the track and hopes that they will prove equally effective on the streets of the Principality.
“It was essential to bring these updates to the track because we will use them again next week.”
Before leaving the press, Bottas then wanted to comment on the nice overtaking carried out by Max Verstappen against him on the outside of turn 3. For the Alfa Romeo driver, the merit of that maneuver was not so much in the handle of the world champion , as well as in the advantage of tires that the Dutchman could enjoy.
“Max’s overtaking on the outside of Turn 3 was only made easier by the cooler tires. I wasn’t surprised, you can have a lot more speed with a fresh set than with a used one ”.
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