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Alfa Romeo’s disrupted start to day two of Formula 1’s Bahrain test was caused by technical problems including what Valtteri Bottas called a “new issue”.
The Sauber-run team had a difficult first test in Spain, where it battled extreme porpoising and mechanical problems that it could not solve until the car was back at the factory.
Its solutions led to a much-improved showing on Thursday in Bahrain, where Bottas managed more laps in half a day than he did in the entire Barcelona test.
However, when the ex-Mercedes driver got back into the car on Friday morning, he was unable to build substantially on that progress – first with a sudden technical problem that cut short an early run before a hydraulic leak caused him to stop on track before the lunch break.
“We missed quite a few runs,” said Bottas who completed just 25 laps of running in the morning. “We had some set-up tests planned, mainly long runs.
“It was a bit of a problematic day, we had an issue halfway through the morning that cost us a lot of time – a new technical problem that we hadn’t seen before.
🚩 RED FLAG (again) 🚩
Bottas stops on track and that will see us to the end of the first session ⏱#F1Testing #F1 pic.twitter.com/ssW2p2orgJ
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 11, 2022
“And at the end of the day, we had a hydraulic leak.
“So we miss something. At least I got a bit of driving, I think we’ve got one or two set-up tests done.
“But in these conditions is never easy to work on the car set-up, because it’s so different in the evening.”
Zhou Guanyu will take over from Bottas for Friday afternoon and kick off the final day before Bottas drives again on Saturday evening.
He remains optimistic about the position the team is in, especially as it has resolved the core issue that blighted it in Spain.
“I think we’ve been able to optimise the car more,” Zhou said.
“We haven’t had the bouncing issue [porpoising] anymore. So naturally, then you can try and run the car a bit lower which gives you performance. And set-up wise we definitely yesterday went to the right direction with many things mechanically.
“But we’ve only taken the first steps now of discovering the car. And it’s a shame there’s no more testing, but it’s what it is.
“But we need to just maximise the learning in the next two days.”
