Valtteri Bottas recovered from a "disastrous" start in the Bahrain Grand Prix to score an encouraging top-ten finish in his first race with Alfa Romeo.
Looking at the numbers, one would describe Bottas' race as nothing lost, nothing gained as the Finn crossed the finish line P6, the position in which he had qualified.
However, a dismal launch off the line saw the Alfa driver conclude his opening lap a lowly 14th, which left him with a heavy workload on his hands for the remainder of the evening.
"The start was definitely the weak point of the race, a bit of a disaster," he said. "Just massive wheelspin off the line.
"Pretty much cooked the rear tyres and I was like a sitting duck for the first lap.
"Something to learn, something to look into. But when things stabilized, actually it was a good recovery, good strategy and smooth race."
©AlfaRomeo
A flawless and consistent drive based on a three-stop strategy propelled the Finn back into the points mid-race, after which he benefitted in the final laps from the double retirement suffered by Red Bull.
Bottas was overall pleased with the speed and performance of Alfa's C42 and hailed the result achieved by his teammate Guanyu Zhou who finished P10 on his F1 debut in Bahrain.
"I think we had decent pace, so its encouraging," he said. "And I'm really happy for Guanyu as well, first race and he got points. It's pretty good. Double points to start the season, not bad!
"The pace is there. There's still some things with the car that we need to improve, especially things like the high-speed corners, there's a bit of weakness, but other than that it's a good starting point."
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