2023 Qatar Grand Prix – Friday report
Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK returned to Q3 as Valtteri Bottas qualified in P9 for Sunday’s Qatar Grand Prix. It was a sterling performance by the Finn, who maximised the potential of his upgraded C43 to make it all the way under the lights of the Lusail circuit. On the other side of the garage, there was frustration for Zhou Guanyu, who couldn’t take advantage of the car’s pace when his lap was compromised by an incident with Logan Sargeant, finally setting the 20th time.
There will be plenty of action before Sunday’s showdown, however, with the Shootout and the Sprint taking place tomorrow – another chance for Valtter and Zhou to maximise the pace of the team’s Doha performance.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “We can be happy about this result: it shows that all the work we have done in the past few months, and the developments we have brought to track bear fruit. It’s testament to the good job done by the team back home in Hinwil and our race team here tonight. Of course, this is only a qualifying session and there is still a lot of work ahead of us to bring home the points: yet, single-lap performance had been one of our weakest points, so tonight’s result shows we’re moving in the right direction. We will be starting in the top half of the grid with Valtteri, and this will allow us to plan a different race. It is a shame that Zhou was not able to enter Q2: his lap was compromised by the incident with Sargeant, but he will have the pace to be able to recover positions on Sunday. We approach tomorrow’s Sprint with the aim to confirm the performance we have shown today: our target will be to score points, and this will also be the objective for Sunday and every single event between now and the end of the season.”
Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK C43 (Chassis 02/Ferrari)
FP: 17th / 1:29.041 (27 laps)
Q1: 1:26.038 (9 laps)
Q2: 1:25.297 (6 laps)
Q3: 9th / 1:25.058 (6 laps)
“I am happy to have made it back into Q3 after a while, and I felt really confident in the car today. This result is a good reward for the whole team, for the job done over the past few weeks. It has been a positive surprise to be in the top ten but it shows how we hit the ground running, right from the only practice session – as we intended to – and made all the right calls. Of course, tomorrow will be a new, standalone day, with the Shootout and the Sprint, but we have definitely kicked things off the right way and, most importantly, we’ll be lining up on the grid in the top ten on Sunday, right in the fight for points.”
Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK C43 (Chassis 01/Ferrari)
FP: 18th / 1:29.106 (29 laps)
Q1: 20th / 1:27.432 (9 laps)
“We should have qualified much higher up, as we saw with Valtteri, but we never got a chance to even set our final lap in Q1. It’s frustrating, Logan [Sargeant] decided to overtake me on the start/finish straight and that destroyed both our laps. The track was improving with every lap, and we could not set a lap when it really mattered, It was a completely unnecessary move, but it doesn’t matter now – the damage is done and we need to move on and think about the rest of the weekend. Tomorrow we get a chance to exploit our pace in the Shootout and the Sprint: we will need to have a clean first session and maximise what we can achieve in the evening.”
