Feature

Team Talk - Sunday in Jeddah

Alfa Romeo


Valtteri Bottas
"It's a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least. The engine temperatures kept rising, we need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn't want to lose the engine. It's how racing goes, we now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on. Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles: now let's make sure we get back to scoring in Australia."

Guanyu Zhou
"I want to think this was a good experience in terms of getting more confidence with street circuits in Formula One. It was useful, but overall the race was definitely far from ideal: we had the anti-stall kicking in at turn one, even though I had a much better start than in Bahrain, so we will need to understand what happened. I had made a good recovery from P18 and we were looking strong to bring home some points again, but the drive-through put us far at the back and that was it. Let's hope for a smoother race in Australia, the car feels good so we can be competitive again."

Frédéric Vasseur, team principal
"It's a disappointing end to an evening in which we showed so much pace. We were on course to have two cars in the points again, but luck was not on our side tonight and we leave with nothing: Valtteri was stopped by a cooling issue when he was fighting for P6, while Zhou, who was recovering from the bottom after his car went into anti-stall after a contact with Ricciardo in turn two, would have been in the top ten if not for the drive-through penalty he was given. It hurts, but this is racing, sometimes, and all we have to do is pull ourselves up and make sure we keep delivering tonight's speed at the next races."

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

Recent Posts

Sainz exposes lingering flaws in Pirelli’s rain tyre range

Carlos Sainz insists Pirelli still has considerable work to do on its intermediate tyre which…

3 hours ago

Vasseur relieved after Ferrari reset: ‘They left my room joking'

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur admits to feeling relieved after his sit-down in Brazil with…

5 hours ago

Schumacher's first crown, but not his finest hour

On this day in 1994, Michael Schumacher clinched at the season finale Australian Grand Prix…

6 hours ago

Hadjar ‘sad’ to see 2026 end with plenty still ‘in the tank’

Red Bull's Isack Hadjar is not quite ready to call time on his 2026 campaign.…

7 hours ago

Brundle: Stroll is ‘at his wit’s end’ over Aston Martin crisis

Aston Martin F1 team owner Lawrence Stroll is reportedly “at wit’s end”, according to Sky…

9 hours ago

Wolff: Mercedes were not ‘complete losers’ during title drought years

Toto Wolff has no intention of rewriting Mercedes’ recent history now that the team is…

10 hours ago