Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN celebrated a great team performance, with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu delivering a double-points finish at the Canadian Grand Prix. During a thrilling race in Montreal, Valtteri and Zhou brought their C42s home in P7 and P8 respectively, the second time this season both cars finished in the top ten.
The ten points claimed today bring the team's total to 51, as the team continues to fight for a place at the top of the midfield.
Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal: "We achieved a really good result as a team and we can be really pleased with our performance. Both Valtteri and Zhou executed their races well and were able to bring home their cars in the points, which is a nice reward after a few tough weekends. It shows the spirit of this team, we didn't let our heads drop and we came back fighting here in Canada. I can't fault either of the drivers for their races, they were solid and didn't do mistakes: Valtteri was able to make the most of the timing of the Safety Car and Zhou delivered a very mature performance to get back in the points. The crew performed when they were called to the fore, such as with the double-stacked pit-stop – this is a true team result and it gives us a lot of confidence as we continue our fight in the midfield."
Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN C42 (Chassis 01/Ferrari)
Race result: 7th
Fastest lap: 1:16.927 (Lap 60)
Tyres: New Hard (49 laps) – New Medium (21 laps)
"We can be pleased with today's race, especially with the pace we have shown throughout the afternoon. It's always good to get double points, particularly after a couple of difficult races, but the most important thing was to see that we could fight the cars around us and that we are back at the level we had at the start of the season. My race was quite straightforward: I started on the hard tyre and then everything went perfectly for me. The timing of the Safety Car was ideal, I was like 'happy days!' It felt really good to be out there, and I'm happy for Zhou as well. He had strong pace and he can take a lot of confidence from this weekend."
Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN C42 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
Race result: 8th
Fastest lap: 1:16.578 (Lap 63)
Tyres: New Medium (19 laps) – New Hard (30 laps) – New Hard (21 laps)
"It's been a pretty good weekend for me and for the team, and I am really happy with P8 as it's my best finish in F1 so far. Today we did everything correctly on track and with the strategy: we got stuck behind Lance for a while, but nevertheless we had clean, fast progress over the weekend. We extracted everything we could and got the full potential out of the car, and finishing in the Top 10 after a sequence of frustrating races is a nice reward. I obviously didn't have much experience on this track, but we got the job done in tricky conditions yesterday and today we had strong pace: I knew that we would be able to fight for points, and we did. I am super happy for the everyone here and back at the factory, we really deserved this result for the work done and the progress achieved over the past few weeks. I'm really looking forward to continuing in this vein in the next races."