Bottas 'pretty satisfied', despite Saturday technical issue

Valtteri Bottas pronounced himself 'pretty satisfied' with how the three days of pre-season testing had gone for the Alfa Romeo squad.

That's despite a technical issue that struck the team on Saturday morning, when the C43 came to a halt on track while driving through the second sector of the Bahrain International Circuit.

Onboard footage showed the car had been parked in fifth gear suggesting that it was a gearbox-related issue, which was also implied by Bottas telling the pit wall that "I lost drive" over the team radio.

It is the second stoppage in two days for Alfa Romeo, which also encountered problems attempt to complete a practice start at the end of the pit lane on Friday.

But the glitches did little to hold the team back. After Zhou Guanyu finished top of the times on the second day, today it was Bottas' turn to go third fastest by the time the session ended.

Having completed 72 laps by the time of the stoppage, it hadn't been long before Bottas was back out on track to finish with a total of 131 laps, after spending all day in the cockpit.

"Overall I am pretty satisfied with how these testing days have gone," he reported after the end of the test. "The car felt good, and I reckon the feeling in the cockpit improved over the winter.

• Read also: Perez beats Hamilton on final day of Bahrain testing

"We got plenty of laps in today, despite a technical issue which cost us some time," he continued, referring to the stoppage.

"Thanks to the work of our mechanics, I was able to return to the track rather quickly and complete the whole programme we had set for ourselves for this final day."

It's now just a matter of days before Bottas returns to the track for the first free practice session of the 2023 season ahead of the Bahrain GP on Sunday March 5.

"I'm looking forward to getting back on track in a week and finally get that racing feeling again," he smiled, with fans eager to see whether he will retain his special 'mullet' helmet for the season opener.

Alfa Romeo technical director Jan Monchaux also indicated that he was satisfied with how the three days of testing had gone for the team.

The most important thing when having limited testing is to tick off all the boxes, and we’ve managed to do that," he reported. "We collected plenty of data and I feel we’ve prepared for the season as best as we could.

"Reliability was reasonably good for this stage in the season," he insisted. "When we had some minor issues, the good work by our crew enabled us to make up the lost time without affecting our programme."

Like the other teams at work this week, Monchaux was wary about predicting how Alfa ranked alongside their rivals based on the last three days or how things were looking for next week's race.

"Performance wasn’t yet our main aim," he said. "We didn’t focus on what the others were doing but simply looked at ourselves.

"Like everyone else on the grid, we still have some homework to do ahead of next week, of course," he added.

"We remain focused on delivering our best work in what is going to be a long season, and we’re excited to go back to racing at last.”

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter