Bottas: Alfa Romeo’s F1 testing woes now behind us

Alfa Romeo endured a difficult opening test at Barcelona at the end of February and managed a combined total of just 175 laps across the three days of running at the Spanish Grand Prix venue. 

But the Swiss-based outfit enjoyed a strong first day in Bahrain as Bottas and rookie teammate Guanyu Zhou cloaked 120 laps between them to sit third in Thursday’s mileage charts. 

And the Finn is confident Alfa Romeo has now overcome its struggles. 

"All the issues we had in Barcelona seems like they are now behind us,” said Bottas. 

“So that’s a positive. To be able to do that in one week, and for the team to be able to do that in one week, that was crucial actually that we got those laps. 

“We finally managed to do some set-up work and find out how the car responds and what it means and how it behaves. It was nice to feel and see the progress throughout the day.” 

Bottas also revealed that Alfa Romeo has understood and fixed the porpoising problems that played a factor in its curtailed running at Barcelona. 

“Today we had no issues,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the whole grid is probably running the car with a bit of a compromised set-up. 

"But we are in a place now where it’s not an issue for reliability. So that was quite positive.”

Bottas admitted it was a relief for the entire team to finally get on top of the issue that most teams have faced across the two tests. 

“You always aim to fix all the issues and you only see it in reality when you get on track,” he said. 

“It’s a different track as well, different kind of bumps here and a bit higher speeds in some of the straights. So it was good to see there was no issues. 

“I could see some nervous people in the morning hoping that everything goes smoothly and now I could see quite a few happy faces.”