Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo, Circuit de Catalunya, 2023

I don’t know how Zhou managed to escape Q1, admits team mate Bottas

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In the round-up: Valtteri Bottas says he does not understand how Alfa Romeo team mate Zhou Guanyu managed to reach Q2 where he could not

In brief

Bottas amazed by Zhou escaping Q1

Bottas was the last car eliminated from Q1 in 16th place as team mate Zhou comfortably made it through into Q2 in tenth place before qualifying 13th on the grid.

After spinning in the early part of the first session, Bottas said Alfa Romeo struggled to find grip in the damp conditions.

“I think we just lacked a bit of pace and grip,” Bottas said in response to a question from RaceFans. “I don’t know how my team mate managed to get through – I didn’t feel like there was much more lap in terms of how much I was sliding and so on. It’s so different conditions for the tyre temperatures and everything that probably were not in the right window. So we need to have a look at it.”

Correa and Nissany hit by grip drop penalties

Multiple Formula 2 drivers received grid penalties for today’s feature race in Barcelona, after a dramatic sprint event yesterday.

Juan Manuel Correa will start in 14th following a three-place grid drop for contact with Roman Stanek at turn one, while a five-place penalty for crashing into Jehan Daruvala now leaves Roy Nissany on the back-row after initially qualifying 16th.

In the final laps of the sprint race, Nissany locked up and ran straight into the side of Daruvala at the apex of turn ten. While stewards deemed Nissany “wholly responsible” for the incident, they found Correa to only be “predominantly at fault” for his collision.

Jaguar must ensure more team mate clashes can’t happen – Barclay

Jaguar Formula E team principal James Barclay says that his team need to ensure there can be no more clashes between drivers Sam Bird and Mitch Evans after Bird hit Evans during yesterday’s first Jakarta EPrix.

The pair were running in eighth and ninth in the final laps of yesterday’s race when Bird ran into the back of Evans into turn one, sending Evans spinning out of the race. It is the second time Bird has taken Evans out of a race this season, following their collision in India. Bird immediately apologised on his radio, and was penalised with a five-second post-race penalty by the stewards.

Barclay said that the team had immediately spoken with their drivers to address the clash after the race. “We managed that straight away,” he said. “We just need to focus forward now – there’s no point looking back. But for sure we need to ensure that we don’t let that happen.”

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Comment of the day

With yet another pole position for Max Verstappen, @david-br believes the world champion is in a different league to anyone else on the grid at the moment…

Verstappen is becoming Ferrari/Schumacher-level untouchable, so way ahead, car and driver, that it’s actually difficult to gauge anything. A separate formula almost. Meanwhile everyone else seem increasingly bunched up. But until Mercedes can introduce a new chassis next year (and copy that really quite stunningly beautiful Red Bull floor), I can’t imagine them bothering Verstappen on the time sheets.
David BR

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Nathan Bradley, Alexf1Man and Sam Lotay!

On this day in motorsport

  • 45 years ago today Lotus swept to a one-two in the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama, Mario Andretti leading Ronnie Peterson home

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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7 comments on “I don’t know how Zhou managed to escape Q1, admits team mate Bottas”

  1. Zhou just did better & COTD is probably right.

    Finally, traffic issues indeed shouldn’t be a thing time & time again with circuits.

  2. Traffic was again an issue, and actually this year is the worst I remember by far. Qualy was the las track event, it finished at about 5 PM local time. At 7:30 PM we were still inside the circuit roads. Absolute chaos.

    1. Good old Fritz-Dieter Rencken suffering, too.
      https://twitter.com/RacingLines/status/1665240946378780673

    2. Having F1 as the last event isn’t the best idea, as that does tend to keep everyone in the stands and then leave at the same time. It wouldn’t make much sense to build infrastructure that has to be maintained all year for two days of peak traffic, so some delays are inevitable – especially when public transport is a poor alternative (according to Google Maps, the best option is a once-an-hour bus to Barcelona that’s a 30 minute walk away from the track; the circuit itself lists a train as an option that’s over 45 minutes walk away from the track).

  3. Would I want 20 Verstappens in ten different teams or would I want 20 similar cars driven by 20 different drivers. In any cases in todays world Verstappen would win. Well at least if he could be as familiar with that car as he is with Red Bull. But in the first case Verstappen would be last so that doesn’t happen in any other scenario.
    In the latter case if all the cars would be Red Bulls then Red Bull would be last and that could happen in real life because in the other Red Bull we have Perez who is not as good as Verstappen. So I would take 20 Verstappens in 10 different teams just to witness 20+ double wins for the Red Bull pair of Verstappen – Verstappen but then the last place would be Verstappen – Verstappen in Williams.

    1. @qeki
      Last Verstappen is still better than DNF-Verstappen in the Ferrari though…

  4. Thanks for COTD. I think since Spa last year, Verstappen’s attitude (not driving as such) has switched from edgy challenger to 100% confident champion. Since then, he’s been mostly untouchable. Given Perez offers no real contest at most venues, it’s now just a question of how long the other teams take to catch up.

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