Bottas: rivals were ahead of us at the pace of modernisation

Valtteri Bottas admitted that rivals were ahead of Alfa Romeo in the pace of equipment modernisation, which affected results over the season, but he hopes the team can still finish the championship in 6th place in the Constructors’ Championship. Championship.

Valtteri Bottas: “It was nice to be back in the top ten in Mexico because a lot of time has passed since the race in which I had previously earned points. Of course even a single point for 10th place is better than nothing, but the most positive thing was that we were competitive again, especially in qualifying.

Of course we hoped for a better result in the race, but the tires didn’t work at all as we expected, so the pace on Sunday was clearly worse than the speeds we could on Saturday.

But this weekend we also have a sprint race and this gives the opportunity to earn extra points, they are important for our team to stay ahead of Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship. Thanks to the technical innovations that we have introduced relatively recently, we can hope that the Brazilian circuit will be able to perform more competitively.

The rivalry with Aston Martin is increasing and there are only two stages left and we don’t care if we finish 6th or 7th at the end of the season. If we finish sixth, the team will receive more prize money and can spend this money not only on finishing the car, but also on the racers’ salaries! (laughs)

Overall, the year was uneven, we had a great start to the season, but then reliability problems started, and we often had bad luck. But we have to admit that some teams were ahead of us in terms of the pace of the modernization of the machine, and we were only able to add to this towards the end of the season.

But our project is for the long term, so now the focus is already on preparing for the next season. So overall the year can be rated as pretty good, if you remember what positions the team had in the past two seasons.