Bottas singles out Zhou's 'biggest strength' in 2022

Valtteri Bottas says he was impressed with Zhou Guanyu's rookie season in Formula 1, the Finn noting his Alfa Romeo teammate's "biggest strength": his lack of mistakes.

Zhou kicked his F1 career into gear with a top-ten finish in Bahrain but suffered from poor reliability therefore that weighed on his results.

Although he would only rack up two more points scoring finishes in the remainder of the year, in Canada and in Italy, Zhou was given good marks by Bottas who witnessed up close the Chinese driver's undeniable talent.

"The biggest strength this year has been that he really hasn’t made any mistakes," Bottas told Motorsport.com.

"It’s not guaranteed as a rookie, and it’s a sport where it’s easy to try too much and too hard and make silly mistakes.

"But he’s been good on giving himself some time to develop and not wanting things too quickly. He’s been able to progress step by step, both in qualifying pace and then in race pace.

"His technical knowledge is getting better and better, he’s getting more confident on choosing the set-up for him. It’s been good to see the progress."

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In addition to his clean track record, Zhou's performance went crescendo during the season, the 23-year-old even outqualifying his experienced teammate on eight occasions last year.

Bottas also felt that Zhou and himself has worked well together, and that there was "really good respect both ways".

"We can work together really well," said the ten-time Grand Prix winner.

"That’s important for a team that is trying to make progress, because if you have team-mates that are crashing into each other on-track, it’s not helping anything."

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