Vasser: Weekend in Baku ended in disappointment for us

Alfa Romeo was unhappy with the results of the Baku race as Guanyu Zhou left the race due to technical problems and Valtteri Bottas finished only 11th and did not earn any points. This prevented the Swiss team from staying on the fifth line of the Constructors’ Championship and giving the Alpine F1 the lead.

Frederic Vasseur, Team Principal: “Sunday in Baku ended in disappointment for us, as the streak of scoring performances was interrupted after five good races. It’s a shame Zhou retired due to a technical problem, because so far he was riding at an excellent pace, without making a single mistake, and should have earned points.

Today he deserved a good result, but at least we have the opportunity to evaluate Zhou’s performance, and we are sure that he is making progress.

Valtteri had a tough race and now we have to analyze what exactly went wrong. We couldn’t get any speed out of his car all weekend. Before the stage in Montreal, we still have to figure everything out to get back to the level we have been at since the start of the season.

Valtteri Bottas (11th): “We arrived in Baku with the intention of earning points, but we leave empty handed, and of course I am not happy with how the weekend went.

The race seemed very long to me because we didn’t have the pace. I believe there were serious problems with the car and we need to sort that out. We need to examine the reasons for this in detail before we go to Montreal, but I have no doubt that we will do it and take action.

In other respects, if we do not take into account the lack of speed, the team acted well, chose and implemented tactics correctly, but this was not enough to earn points.

I really feel for Zhou because until his retirement his race was going very well – overall it was not our day. But I’m already preparing for the Canadian stage, which we have next week. We haven’t played in Montreal in a long time, it will be great to be there again.”

Guanyu Zhou (didn’t finish): “Today we didn’t make it to the finish, which is frustrating, but I want to emphasize the positive aspects of my performance. Before the trouble started, the race was going well,
I made no mistakes, rode fast and fought for the points.

The pace was at the level and I know we were able to show a good result. We’re out of luck, but the most important thing right now is to fix the problem so it doesn’t happen again in the future, so we don’t miss any more opportunities to succeed. We will look at the causes of what happened and try to draw conclusions to get stronger.”