Alfa Romeo changes Bottas' chassis after Q3 damage

Valtteri Bottas sat out Saturday's FP2 session as his Alfa Romeo crews undertook to build up a spare chassis for the Finn in time for this afternoon's Sprint race at Imola.

On Friday, Bottas had been ordered to park his car at the start of Q3 after Alfa's telemetry had registered excessive temperatures due to a broken exhaust.

Further inspection revealed damage to the C42's wiring loom at the rear as well as to several components. The team decided that it would be easier to replace the chassis than to replace the very complex wiring.

However, the Hinwil squad's crews could only begin their work on Saturday morning as F1's parc fermé rules precluded the team from undertaking repairs on Friday.

Unfortunately, the work could not be completed in time for today's final practice session.

“We had an issue on the exhaust,” explained team boss Fred Vasseur, quoted by Motorsport.com.

“And then it burned all the components around it, including the loom, and including the casing of the gearbox. The loom is going inside the chassis, and it's easier to change it."

"We expected yesterday to have to do it, but the car is sealed. Either you break the seals and you start from the pitlane, or you wait for this morning and you risk FP2. We hoped to make it, but we were too optimistic.

“The fact that we missed FP2, this is a shame. For sure, it would have been better to do the session, or we would always stay in the garage for FP2!”

• Read also: Alfa Romeo praises 'calm, motivational' Bottas

Vasseur will head into the Sprint event with no Saturday mileage, but the Finn will rely on the data collected by teammate Guanyu Zhou who enjoyed a solid FP1 session.

“I trust him on the fact that the adaptation will be quite quick, and he will have a look at the data from Zhou, and have a good understanding," added Vasseur.

"And he did some laps also yesterday on the almost dry conditions. So I’m not worried.”

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