Valtteri Bottas has given a rallying cry to his Alfa Romeo team to push for points at the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix, calling on his teammates to make it into the top 10 on Sunday.
The Finn has one points finish to his name this season, when he came home in eight-place at the F1 2023 opener in Bahrain. But since the curtain-raiser in the Middle East, the veteran driver has only managed to finish 11th at best.
This is in stark contrast to 2022, when Bottas had 40 points and was eighth in the driver’s standings, marking a disappointing lack of progress for the Alfa Romeo team one year on.
The ex-Mercedes driver has high standards, having experienced champagne in Spain on four occasions in his F1 career and has called on his team to leave with points in the bag.
“We need to see how the car performs here because you need a good car to be in the points,” Bottas said to select members of the press, including Total-Motorsport.com.
“So, let’s wait and see until the end of Friday when we will have a bit of an idea of where we’re at, but yeah, I’m not leaving here without points.
“We’re definitely not where we want to be, and I’m not having the results that I want to be getting because the goal for us this year was to make a step up and be better, and that’s not been the case.
“This is the situation now and we’re obviously trying to move away from this situation but that will take a bit of time and there’s no doubt it will be a challenging season.”
Upgrades for Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo brought an update to Monaco that aimed at improving their C43 car. The package aimed to improve the downforce through fast corners, of which Barcelona is plentiful.
“It’s pretty straightforward, it’s just more downforce but more in the medium to high-speed range,” Bottas added. “At slow speed there’s no sacrifice and in theory it should be the same as before.
“And maybe the car ride height operates in a bit of a different window than before but we’re talking about a couple of millimetres.”
Alfa Romeo struggled to make progress in the off-season but is drawing inspiration from two teams that show there is a way out of a stagnation.
“We need to look at teams like Aston [Martin] or Red Bull and what they’ve done and using that as motivation that it is possible,” Bottas concluded.
