Bottas faced with conundrum: 'No idea how I lost so much time'

Valtteri Bottas has expressed surprise at his results in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix. Quoted by Motorsportweek the Alfa Romeo driver reflects on the session, in which he set the slowest time.

Alfa Romeo started the weekend full of hope. The race in Saudi Arabia was not great, but the race before that in Bahrain the team finished well and in Australia some aerodynamic upgrades were made. So on paper, it should be a fine weekend for the Swiss team, but that was not evident in qualifying. Both Bottas and Guanyu Zhou crashed out in Q1, with Bottas setting the slowest time. Only Sergio Perez was even lower, but a crash prevented the Red Bull driver from setting a time.

"I’m a bit puzzled, really," Bottas responded. "It didn’t feel like there were any major issues, so I have no answer. Tomorrow, I hope there’s going to be some action, some Safety Cars, but let’s see."

"There was a bit too much understeer in the car but it didn’t feel that should cost us half a second from where we think we should be, it’s a bit odd," Bottas analysed. "For sure on the lap I felt the tyres had hit the sweet spot I had a bit of traffic but that just cost me a couple of tenths, not half a second, so I’m not entirely sure. I think that even without traffic it would have been quite difficult to get through to Q2, which is not what we targeted and it’s not where we thought we’d be, so we need to have a look."