In Bahrain, Alfa Romeo used treacherous tactics

The Alfa Romeo team is behaving in much the same way at the start of the new season as it did at the end of the last championship: doing everything it can to make its main rivals earn as few points as possible. Even if such tactics seem somewhat unusual and even insidious.

However, The Race journalists admit that in Bahrain, the Swiss team did not rely on such tactics alone: ​​this time it showed good speed and Valtteri Bottas, frankly, got four points.

Alfa Romeo started the season well last year, but then slowed down, moreover, it was plagued by problems with equipment reliability and at the end of the championship, the number of points on its account did not increase much. However, she managed to stay in 6th place in the Constructors’ Championship and not miss out on Aston Martin.

It was this task that the team solved at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: it was important that it hindered the Aston Martin racers in every possible way.

“The aim was not to try and score points, but if an opportunity like that came up, we would use it,” Alfa Romeo chief race engineer Hevi Pujolar quoted The Race as saying in November’s season finale. “The priority was that the rivals who were behind lost time.”

This means that during the course of the race at the Yas Marina circuit, Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou tried wherever possible to stay ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll. With this calculation, the length of the segments between pit stops was chosen, which was exactly what the team’s tactics were aimed at. The team was less concerned about which places its riders will have.

Lance Stroll then still finished eighth, but Vettel lost too much time to get ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in the battle for ninth – all because he was hampered by Alfa Romeo drivers in the earlier stages of the Grand Prix.

This time in Bahrain, the Hinwil team didn’t have to interfere with others on the track. This time the problem was solved by making full use of their high speed capabilities at the right time of the Grand Prix.

Alfa Romeo’s main rivals in 2023 are McLaren and Alpine. But last Sunday, McLaren essentially retired due to reliability issues and Esteban Ocon was fined almost every possible way, and it was already reminiscent of a comedy.

But Alpine’s second rider, Pierre Gasly, managed to push his way through the peloton to finish ninth. Bottas was able to contain him and did not allow him to rise to eighth position. But the Frenchman made his last pit stop quite late in the period when the virtual safety car mode was introduced (due to Charles Leclerc’s retirement), and at the end of the race he was running on fresher tyres, which allowed him to show the best round.

His score was 1’35.068, about a second better than any other rider. And then Alfa Romeo decided that Gasly would not remain the author of the fastest lap. Therefore, Guanyu Zhou, who started badly and was running in 13th, pitted three laps from the finish.

Although the team had only run-in Soft tyres, the track was already heavily covered in a layer of used rubber and the Chinese rider had very little fuel left in the Chinese rider’s C43 tank, so he completed the lap in 1′ 33,996 and blocked Gasly’s performance.

Because of this Zhou only finished 16th and as he was running well outside the top ten he was not entitled to a bonus point for the best lap – but Alpine F1 did not get this point either.

“He did a great job and set the fastest lap – so we took a point from Alpine, and this is the team we consider our rivals,” Pujolar said with satisfaction.

Perhaps other teams instead of Alfa Romeo would have acted in the same way. But Pujolar speaks openly about this, which on the one hand does not seem to embellish this team, but at the same time takes it into account. Such tactics are necessary when the rivalry in the middle of the pack becomes so acute.