Alfa Romeo at the truce: Encouraging

Alfa Romeo has had an excellent start to the season and appears to be the sixth strongest team on the grid, far behind McLaren and Alpine, but in the fight with the rest of the grid. The combination of an experienced driver, Valtteri Bottas, with a less seasoned driver seems to be working. The Finnish driver brings his experience and allows the team to score big points while the Chinese driver finds his footing.

The best race.

In terms of team results, the best Grand Prix of the season for the Italian side took place in Canada with both drivers finishing in the points. Bottas and Zhou finished the race in 7th and 8th place respectively. These results come as both drivers started from the 10th and 11th positions on the grid.

The best accounting result of the season was at Imola where Bottas finished in fifth place, behind Charles Leclerc, scoring 12 very valuable points in the race for sixth position.

The worst race

Undoubtedly, it was the race at Silverstone. The team couldn’t score a single point, and on top of that, both cars retired. Guanyu Zhou was involved in a terrible accident even before the first corner, causing his car to flip and end up in the fence. Thankfully, the Chinese driver was more scared than harmed. Bottas couldn’t finish the race due to a reliability issue, despite being in the points at some point.

A progression?

Alfa Romeo had an excellent start to the season, scoring points in 6 out of the first 7 races. The Ferrari engine seemed to make a difference during that period of the season. However, the situation seems to have reversed. On one hand, McLaren, Mercedes, and Alpine have improved since the beginning of the season, preventing Alfa Romeo from surprising in certain races. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like the team has made any major positive changes to the car. The performance gain is not evident. In the last four Grand Prix races, the team hasn’t scored a single point in the constructors’ championship. The break comes at the right time for Frédéric Vasseur’s team.

Reliability against the rest of the field.

Since the beginning of the season, the team has already had a total of seven retirements. The Ferrari engine is crucial for the car’s performance, but it is also a handicap as its reliability can let Alfa Romeo down, who needs to score points in the championship. Bottas also highlighted reliability as one of the major issues of the team. It is a weakness that the entire team is aware of and surely worked on during the summer break.

Pilots’ duel

The Finnish driver is having an excellent season. In fact, he has scored 46 out of his team’s 51 points. He has finished in the top 10 in seven out of the first nine races. He has finished in the top 10 70% of the time this season (excluding retirements). The last four Grand Prix races have been more difficult, as Bottas has been forced to retire twice in the last four races and has not been able to finish in the top 10 in the other two races.

He is also very strong in qualifying, having reached Q3 six times this season, which is 46% of the time. He takes advantage of his good Saturdays to then showcase his racing experience on Sundays. As proof, he is currently ninth in the driver standings, ahead of other members of the grid who have a theoretically more powerful car than his.

For Guanyu Zhou, the expectations for his first season in Formula 1 were not excessively high. Obviously, there was no doubt that he would perform less well than his teammate. But for a first season, the Chinese driver has greatly surprised the members of the Alfa Romeo team. However, this does not reflect in the accounting.

With only 5 points scored in the 13 races of the season, Zhou is in 17th place in the drivers’ standings. Unfortunately, he has been plagued by mechanical issues due to the reliability of his car, or sometimes by bad luck with a spectacular accident at Silverstone. His tally doesn’t match the impression he leaves on the track.

The young driver has only reached Q3 twice this season, in Canada and Silverstone, which represents 15% of the time. Unfortunately, he finished just outside of the points in two Grand Prix races. The difference with Bottas therefore lies in the qualifying sessions where the Chinese driver struggles to complete a fast lap. Consequently, he must work hard on Sundays to try to make up positions and score points. Once this qualifying issue is resolved, Alfa Romeo will be able to rely more consistently on its two drivers to scrape a few points in the races.

Here is a comparative table of the two drivers. Bottas is clearly having the upper hand this season.

Position in the championship.

As for the constructor ranking, Alfa Romeo is in sixth place, far behind McLaren and Alpine. We will need to be cautious about a potential comeback from AlphaTauri, Haas, and Aston Martin in the constructor ranking race.