Feature

Team Talk - Sunday in Suzuka

Alfa Romeo


Valtteri Bottas
"The conditions were very difficult today, in particular at the beginning of the race. The first couple of laps were quite risky, mostly because visibility wasn't great from my position, it was a bit sketchy. We seemed to have good pace, especially as the track dried out a bit, but unfortunately it was difficult to overtake today: I think most of the drivers struggled with that, which was a shame as I ended up stuck behind Magnussen for pretty much all of the race. We can still find some positives from this weekend: we were super close to getting into Q3 yesterday, so that's good. It's a small improvement, and we must aim for it for the final races of the season. Hopefully, we can build on that, and have a good qualifying in Austin in a few weeks, where we will also be bringing some additional upgrades on the car."

Zhou Guanyu
"I have positives to take from the weekend, even though we didn't score. It was nice to see that we can still be so close and have good pace; furthermore, it being my first time in Suzuka, I learned a lot over the weekend. Overall, it was a typical Sunday with weather changes and very low visibility. At the start, I suffered a spin at the hairpin, meaning I had to come back from the bottom. At the restart, there were only two ways to go: you either pitted on lap one to go on inters, or you tried to stay out hoping for more rain. I was quite far behind and there was a lot of spray coming my way from the cars in front, so I felt like the best option was to stay out on the wets. We did that, and when we saw the inters were clearly faster, I knew the gamble was lost: still, we gave it a try, and I got to gain my first-ever fastest lap for that. We can be quietly confident for the future: the upgrades we introduced this weekend are looking positive, but we still need some more time to properly understand them."

Frédéric Vasseur, team principal
"Today was a difficult day in which the team performed under very tough conditions. In the end, there was no top ten finish for us, despite a quick car: overtaking turned out to be very difficult, even with a pace advantage, and we couldn't make the progress we wanted after a challenging start. It's a shame to leave Japan with no points: we now have to regroup and make sure we hit the right note in Austin, in two weeks. We know our car and our team are capable of battling towards the front of the midfield, but we need to get our work done to be there. One last thought has to go to the incredible Japanese fans: their presence has made the atmosphere of this race unique, despite the weather. They have been superb from Thursday to tonight and we're looking forward to seeing them again next year."

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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.

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