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Bottas admits Alfa Romeo ‘were expecting to be better than this’ in 2023 · RaceFans

Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas says the crew are “not assembly targets” they set for the 12 months after failing to attain once more at Silverstone.

Bottas had a tough British Grand Prix weekend, breaking down in Q1 after which being excluded from the outcomes of qualifying after the crew failed to supply the required gasoline pattern from his automotive. From twentieth and final on the grid he was in a position to get well to twelfth.

He mentioned it had been a “good race” however admitted “that’s the place the tempo was” in the mean time. He doubted factors would have been doable even even from a better beginning place.

“Positively we made a step, but in addition different groups made steps,” mentioned Bottas. “It’s the secret. So must discover a bit extra.

“We don’t have something coming within the subsequent two occasions, however after the summer season break. So the fellows and ladies really want to work actually exhausting within the manufacturing unit to carry some new bits.”

Alfa Romeo completed sixth within the constructors’ championship final 12 months however seem unlikely to copy that this season. Their second point-less weekend in a row noticed Williams overtake them within the standings, leaving Alfa Romeo ninth.

“It looks as if they’ve made an enormous step, and for us in the mean time they’re out of attain,” Bottas admitted.

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“I believe at this level we’re approaching midway via the season and we’ve not been in a position to actually transfer up the order,” he added. “We had been anticipating to be higher than final 12 months,” mentioned Bottas, including the crew are “not assembly targets” that had been set for the season.

They crew have solely scored 9 factors over the primary 10 rounds of the season, in comparison with 51 over the identical interval final 12 months.

Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar believes the crew can transfer up the standings, as they’re solely two factors away from seventh place.

“Our direct rivals introduced upgrades, and evaluating with AlphaTauri, Haas, we might be combating with them, we’re quicker than them,” he mentioned.

“I believe the one problem is with Williams in the mean time. That they had been performing very robust, they had been combating with Ferrari and even Aston Martin. They appear to be fairly robust the final couple of races, we’ve got to see if that continues like this.

“However for us, we are able to see that each one the gaps are fairly small and from race to race there is usually a little bit of a fluctuation. So on our aspect we’ll simply preserve pushing and optimising our package deal and on the driving and every thing race to race and it’s solely two factors to them.

“So we’re assured nonetheless from now till [summer] shutdown, it’s doable to overhaul Haas and Williams. That’s our intention.”

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Revealed : 2023-07-13 12:13:40

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