Bottas: We decided to take a risk, but the plan didn’t work

The Alfa Romeo cars were not very fast on the Australian circuit, but the team got lucky and Guanyu Zhou earned a few points for 9th place.

Valttery Bottas (11th) “I am happy for Zhou and for the team, because she earned points again at the end of the race, which can only be described as chaotic.

But for me there were few events, except at the end, and basically I was just driving around the track. Immediately after the start we decided to take a chance, so already on the first lap I went to the pits for a set of hard rubber. The plan was to run these tires all the way to the finish, but the red flags prevented that.

When the safety car showed up, we switched to soft tyres, but the red flags again destroyed our whole tactical plan. Difficult weekend, we lacked speed from the start, and all this must be analyzed in detail during the break between races.

I’m even happy that we have some time before the stage in Baku that the team can spend on finalizing the car to increase its competitiveness.

Guanyu Zhou (9th): “Ninth place is not a bad result, especially considering where we came from and the difficulties we faced this weekend. There are many positives: the start was successful and we paid special attention to that; we made no mistakes during the race, although many others did not act in the best way.

But we did everything right, avoided problems and in the final stages of the race I was able to put pressure on Magnussen, which ultimately allowed me to earn points.

The track conditions were difficult, the temperature of the asphalt pavement was low, but we acted accurately, because this is the most important thing.

These are my first points of the season and it’s always nice to get them on such a difficult circuit as Melbourne’s Albert Park. Now we need to make further improvements and I hope we can finish in the top ten again already in Baku.”