Alfa Romeo expand on the pit issue with Guanyu Zhou, while adds on rising temperatures for Valtteri Bottas in F1 Saudi Arabian GP.
For Alfa Romeo, it was disappointing and sobering F1 Saudi Arabian GP at the end of it. From an impressive season opener with a double points finish, they failed to score any points with Bottas retiring from what had been an impressive drive up to that point and Zhou finishing just outside the points having had several issues on the day including once more anti-stall issues.
While the initial investigation showcased rising engine temperature for Bottas to retire, in case of Zhou, apart from the anti-stall situation, the Chinese racer’s grand prix was undone due to pit stop blunder. There was a 5s time penalty for him for gaining an advantage at Turn 1. He had to serve it during his pit stop.
But during the stop, the front Alfa Romeo jackman tried to lift up the car unaware of the penalty. Even there the first mechanic couldn’t lift the car, when the second one stepped in. While the other mechanics didn’t work on the car, but the jackman lifting the car was enough to warrant another penalty to Zhou.
He was closed to getting disqualified but the FIA stewards noted that since five second elapsed by the time the mechanics performed the pit stop, they gave him a drive-through penalty for the jackman to lift the car up. It was due to a comminucation gap from the pitwall to the mechanics, as per Head of trackside Engineering Xevi Pujalor.
“For the pit stop with the penalty, we did a double pit stop and we had a communication problem there and that is why the guy touched the car because with two jacks, the main jack with the first one, second jack with the second one and with a radio communication problem the guy was not aware, the front jack that it was a 5 second penalty and that’s why he touched the car,” the Alfa Romeo chief explained to written media.
Regarding Bottas’ issue, he added: “We didn’t know what went wrong. Like ones at the temperatures going up. We tried to go in clean air, tried to lift off. At the moment still cannot find the issue. Something on the pulling side but we don’t know yet. We may see later when we go back.”
As per the top, it was a frustrating day in the end. For Bottas, it had been a strong drive towards the front most of the day which in the end came to zero. He battled hard against the Alpine pair and even passed Esteban Ocon once.
“It’s a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least,” said Bottas. “The engine temperatures kept rising, we need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn’t want to lose the engine.
“It’s how racing goes, we now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on. Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles,” summed up the Alfa Romeo driver.
It does seem that the Finn is enjoying life with his new team, something of a veteran now perhaps. While his rookie team-mate had an irritating afternoon but remained positive and philosophical despite his setbacks.
“I want to think this was a good experience in terms of getting more confidence with street circuits in Formula One,” said Zhou. “It was useful, but overall the race was definitely far from ideal: we had the anti-stall kicking in at turn one, even though I had a much better start than in Bahrain, so we will need to understand what happened.
“I had made a good recovery from P18 and we were looking strong to bring home some points again, but the drive-through put us far at the back and that was it,” summed up the rookie Alfa Romeo driver.
As a team, they have definitely upped the ante in terms of taking the fight to the midfield outfits. On two Grands Prix in, but already as a team they have made massive progress on last season, but they would want to limit few smaller problems which can cost them points.
Here’s Fernando Alonso on Alfa Romeo pace
Here’s explanation from FIA on Zhou’s drive-through
