Bottas: We found out that we are capable of a decent pace

In Saturday’s sprint in Qatar, Valtteri Bottas finished eleventh, but moved up one place in the final protocol after a penalty from Charles Leclerc. And Guanyu Zhou moved up to 14th after Lance Stroll’s penalty.

Valtteri Bottas (10th): “Today was an interesting day: we found that we are capable of a decent race pace, which allowed us to battle on the track with the competitors driving around us, and although we did not reach the top ten, we we regain some positions.

This gives confidence in the run-up to the main race of the weekend. I’m glad I started with the Medium tires as we thought the Soft tires would deteriorate too much.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the safety car stayed on track a few laps longer than we would have liked, and so we didn’t have time to get something back in the final stages of the sprint. However, tomorrow we will start from a more favorable 9th position and hopefully we can benefit from the good pace we showed in the sprint and have a more realistic chance of points.”

Guanyu Zhou (14-): “The race was eventful for us and we really had to fight. The grip was very poor, but the pace on the Medium tires was good and I overtook Lance Stroll. When the safety car came out for the last time, we decided to take a chance and switch to soft tyres, using a different tactic than Valtteri.

But nothing came of that; the degradation of the Soft tires turned out to be too severe. In any case, we have received a lot of information that will be useful tomorrow. Starting from twentieth position won’t be easy, but we have nothing to lose, we can only move forward.

Overtaking is not that easy here, especially when there are rows of cars close together, giving everyone the opportunity to use DRS, but when we get to an open track we will try to regain positions.”