Valtteri Bottas: It’s too early to draw conclusions

On Friday, Valtteri Bottas showed the fifth fastest time, but urged not to rush to conclusions – the rivals were not working on their speed…

Valtteri Bottas (5th): “It’s always nice to finish in the top five, but it’s too early to draw conclusions. Tomorrow everything will improve significantly, we will also try to get more out of the car, but today everything went well.

We understand in which direction we need to work with the institutions to improve the balance. In slow corners, understeer gets in the way and if we deal with this we can gain back a lot of time.

The track turned out to be what we expected: fast, with long straights and very slippery at the start of the session. The grip improved with every lap and we expect the situation to change for the better tomorrow.

We have to try to get more out of the car, this night will last even longer than the last, but we will keep working.”

Guanyu Zhou (18th): “An interesting session, both in terms of time and track conditions. I don’t think the results reflect our true pace. To better assess the situation for my car, we chose different settings than for Valtteri, they did not work so well and on the last attempt I locked the tires. But now we know how to get more out of the car.

The surface was very slippery, which is not surprising given the new tarmac and rain yesterday, but it improved considerably as the session progressed and I expect it will remain that way tomorrow, with improved lap times.

On this track, confidence in braking and tire operating temperature are important. We need to develop an optimal action plan for qualifying, taking into account that it might be even cooler tomorrow.”