Frederic Wasser: Sprint gives you a chance to earn back

Alfa Romeo failed to achieve optimal balance during morning practice, affecting qualifying results…

Frederic Vasseur, team leader: “Qualifying turned out to be difficult. Valtteri showed the 13th time, and Zhou – 18th. We didn’t manage to get the optimal balance, and on such a short track with minimal difference between the teams in the middle group, you immediately refuse to go back if you are not 100% ready.

Tomorrow’s sprint race gives us a chance to bounce back, hopefully we’ll start a few positions higher on Sunday. In Spielberg you can overtake, we will do everything we can to get a good result in the sprint and get ready for Sunday’s race.”

Valtteri Bottas (13th): “Overall the feel of the car was not bad, but the result is clearly not in line with our expectations. The results in the middle group turned out to be very close, I missed grip and maximum speed a bit, which affected the result. But in the race we have to be more competitive.

On Sunday [из-за штрафа] I will start at the tail end of the race, but there are also points in the Saturday sprint that I will fight for.”

Guanyu Zhou (18th): “I am disappointed with the results of the day. The track is very short, on the first fast lap I couldn’t get the tires to work, the second time they worked better and I added, but the grip was still not enough so I couldn’t continue.

After the accident at Silverstone, the car was put back together for me, it was not easy to get used to it completely in one training session. Basically the car worked well, but we didn’t have enough speed.

This is my second weekend with a sprint race, the first at Imola I didn’t show up, I stopped on the first lap, but I hope I can regain a few places tomorrow, and on Sunday I will fight for points. I believe anything is still possible, you have to understand what went wrong today and add to it tomorrow.”