F1 team struggling this season won't give up: 'Holding its head high'

With two cars in Q3, Alfa Romeo was one of the surprises of qualifying last weekend at the Mexican Grand Prix weekend. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou were allowed to start from ninth and 10th place last race, but had a rather colourless Sunday, as the drivers finished 14th and 15th.

Alfa Romeo team boss holds head high

Alfa Romeo is ninth in the constructors' championship as it scored just 16 points in the 2023 season. Ten of those came from Bottas and the remaining six are in the name of the 24-year-old Chinese driver. Team boss Alessandro Alunni Bravi holds out hope and is giving the team extra encouragement ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

"Still, we keep our head high and our eyes set on our target," the team boss explained. "We have shown an improvement in terms of qualifying pace, and the next step is to further improve our race pace, too. Brazil is the final Sprint event of the season, which means we have once again twice the chances to score points this weekend, and the aim is to make the best out of it," the Italian informed.

Bottas and Zhou look ahead

For drivers Bottas and Zhou, it is not exactly a very easy season. Team boss Alunni Bravi previously said that Red Bull driver Sergio Perez would be more than welcome to race for the Swiss constructor. The drivers currently behind the Alfa Romeo will be speaking ahead of the race in South America.

Bottas is ready for the race at Interlagos in Brazil: "It’s a place where you can fight and have some fun, with overtaking opportunities to climb through the field: hopefully, that’ll be the case, once again, as we aim to quickly get back on our feet and recover the ground lost," the former Mercedes driver explained.

"We have seen it, just at the start of the month, that great results are within our reach if we all do our job to the best of our capabilities: this shall be our common target," Zhou revealed ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix. "We prepare to fully extract the potential of our car and get into the mix for points," he concludes.