Valtteri Bottas admits that Alfa Romeo have "work to do" after the team experienced some issues during the first pre-season test in Barcelona. The Swiss outfit put in the second least amount of laps at the three-day event, with only Haas having achieved less than them, and as such there was limited running for Bottas, Guanyu Zhou and reserve driver Robert Kubica. Despite not getting as much track time as hoped for, Bottas was able to get a basic feel for the car's potential, as well as any problem areas. "The nice feeling is that I definitely feel that there is potential," Bottas told media including RacingNews365.com at the launch of Alfa's 2022 car, the C42. "There's some strong areas in the car, in certain type of corners. But also of course [I] immediately noticed points to work on, with the balance, with some of the behaviour, but nothing that we shouldn't be able to fix. "So it feels like we are still in [the] very early stages of actually discovering the car."
Alfa aiming to work hard during Bahrain test
Given his lack of time behind the wheel in Spain, Bottas says that the team are aiming to put a lot of work in during the second pre-season test, which takes place in Bahrain on 10-12 March. "For me, it was quite limited running that we had with only two different tyre compounds, [and] only with very few set-up changes," the Finn explained. "So there's still so much more to discover, so that's why we're really aiming to work hard during the test and hopefully get a better understanding in Bahrain. "But there's work to do. I'm not saying anything against that, but also I feel like there is potential in this package, and I'm looking forward to discover more about it with the team."
What caused Alfa's issues in Barcelona?
In terms of what caused Alfa's problems in Barcelona, Team Principal Fred Vasseur admits that, like many teams, they were affected by the issue of 'porpoising', but that they also faced some "mechanical issues" in the latter half of the test. Whilst admitting that fixing the problems will be a "challenge", Vasseur says he feels "confident" that they can be resolved. "We'll come back next week [at the next test], all the teams, with a new configuration to fix it," Vasseur added. Jan Monchaux, Technical Director at Alfa Romeo, believes that it is preferable to deal with these concerns now rather than once the season begins. "I have no crystal ball with me," Monchaux said. "In the past we've been usually very good on reliability for this new car. We had to go very extreme on some design features [on the 2022 car], essentially because of the weight impact. "So yes, we had a few issues to solve, but I'm relatively confident we'll be on top of them. As [for] the mechanical issue [...] to some extent I prefer to happen now than during the season. "Usually when we have those issues, we fix them once and for all. It's also why we go testing. So yeah, we would have liked [to be] doing more mileage, for sure. "As it is we can't change that. We need to go home now and have a little bit more than a week to fix quite a few things."
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