Valtteri Bottas says that he will help rookie teammate Guanyu Zhou when they start working together at Alfa Romeo this season. The team will field a completely new line-up for 2022, following on from the exit of Antonio Giovinazzi and the retirement of Kimi Raikkonen. Bottas arrives at the squad off the back of a five-year stint with Mercedes. Meanwhile, Zhou will be the only rookie driver on the grid this year, and makes the step up from the Formula 2 series. Bottas hopes that he and Zhou can work together to push the team forwards. "With any Formula 1 team, when you join, you have so many smart people to guide you, [to] help you," Bottas told media including RacingNews365.com . "Obviously me as a teammate, I'm trying to help him as well, because we need to work as a team, and we need to be the team that will hopefully bring lots of points and good results in the right direction. "So [I'm] looking forward to it."
Bottas trusted Alfa Romeo over teammate decision
The second seat at Alfa Romeo alongside Bottas was the last one to be announced ahead of the 2022 season, with the news finally being confirmed in November that Zhou would join the team. When asked whether the Swiss outfit consulted him on who would be his new teammate, Bottas says that he trusted team boss Fred Vasseur to make the right call. "I got some updates, like [with] what's going on, what's most likely going to happen, and before, obviously, it was announced," the Finn explained. "But the information, I left it to Fred, completely. I trust him [to decide] what is best for the team, and that's how it ended up." Alfa Romeo finished the 2021 F1 season in ninth place in the Constructors' Championship with 13 points. Meanwhile, Bottas helped Mercedes to secure a record eighth consecutive title at the top of the team rankings.
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