Out of the top-15
The last Bahrain Grand Prix ended with the team F1 Stakes one step away from the points zone with Guanyu Zhou11th at the finish line and with an overall performance that had provided good hopes for the next one Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. However, both the Chinese driver and his teammate Valtteri Bottas failed to reach the points zone, and also in this circumstance due to an episode that ruined the race of one of the two drivers.
The case of the dice
While in Sakhir it was a very long pit stop that compromised Bottas's hopes of a top-10 finish due to a nut of a tire, the same problem occurred to Zhou in Jeddah. During the tire change, in fact, the Chinese driver had to say 'goodbye' to any goal of reaching the points zone, especially after starting from last position due to an accident in PL3 which did not allow the mechanics to make repairs in time the car.
Difficult weekend and investigations begin
What is certain is that the problems that are occurring in the pits are starting to be a real case in Hinwil: “It certainly wasn't my weekend – admitted Zhou, 18th at the finish line – the race was complex from the start, but we managed the mediums for a long time before mounting the softs. We could have finished in 11th position, but unfortunately the pit stop compromised my race. We had another problem with the nut, what about our team is investigating. We need to understand how it happened and improve so that it doesn't happen again. The positive aspect of this weekend is that my pace seemed good, and we are close to the points.”
Wrong strategy
No problems with the tire change this time for Valtteri Bottas, who still finished his race in 17th position: “It was undoubtedly a tough race, and overall a difficult weekend – commented – we weren't able to have the pace we wanted. We aimed for an aggressive strategy with the soft-hard tyres, but we soon ran into difficulty with the hard ones. We then went back to the softs towards the end, in the hope that they could make a difference, but unfortunately we lost a lot of time on our rivals, and were unable to improve. With a week off before Australia, we will need to find time to analyze with the team what went wrong. This is only the second of twenty-four races, but it will be important to go in the right direction and work to solve our problems. It must be said that we have obtained important data, with which we hope to be able to make concrete steps forward to be able to fight for the points”.
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