Photo: Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix didn’t go to plan for Alfa Romeo, as they looked to build on a good result in the Bahrain season opener.
Instead, the Swiss based outfit fell away from the top 10, and struggled throughout much of the weekend in Jeddah.
Valtteri Bottas sustained damage that effectively ruined his race on the first lap, meaning the team were left to rely on Zhou Guanyu to pick up the pieces. Sadly, the car didn’t have the pace to push for points.
Head of Trackside Engineering, Xevi Pujolar, spoke about the weekend after the race.
“We just need to analyse everything and see what we will do,” he said.
“The pace we had was not as good as we had in qualifying, so we need to understand the grip limits and the power limits.”
The Spaniard was keen to ease fears about the team’s ability to pick up points, as he discussed the difficulty of being in a closely fought midfield battle.
Photo: Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake
“We need to analyse compared to the competitors and see what we can do. But at the moment I don’t think we need to be too worried.
“Everything’s still very tight and even if we are outside of the points, it doesn’t take much to be inside of the points again for next race.”
Next week’s Australian Grand Prix signals the last opportunity to score points for nearly a month, as F1 hits a mini break thanks to the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix.
Talking about their hopes for Australia, Pujolar remains optimistic.
“I don’t expect to see the same order. I hope that we will be at the front of the midfield. That’s our target and we’ll work very hard next week to achieve that.”
