Valtteri Bottas is hoping to duplicate last year’s Imola success

A season ago, Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas enjoyed his best weekend of the season in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Bottas, and the rest of the team, are hoping for a repeat performance in this year’s event.

Alfa Romeo currently sit eighth in the Constructors’ standings, with six points to show for their efforts through five races this Formula 1 season. Bottas delivered four of those points, thanks to his eighth-place finish in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Teammate Zhou Guanyu delivered the other two, with his ninth-place showing in Australia.

Thanks to their experience at Imola — with the Emilia Romagna serving as one of two home races for the Italian outfit — and some planned upgrades for the C43, the team is hoping to come away with something to show for their efforts this weekend.

“It was good to see the team showing some progress in Miami, even though there are still some improvements we need to make,” said Zhou in the team’s pre-race media report. “The team back at base in Hinwil has been working nonstop on the upgrades for our C43: it’s been a big effort from everyone involved and I am very keen to be back on track and see what we can achieve.”

“I am really looking forward to getting back on track in Imola: the team has been flat out working on the car and we are bringing new parts for our car here – hopefully they’ll help us to make an improvement and get back in the fight for points,” added Bottas. “It is also one of our two home races of the season, and to do well for ourselves and Alfa Romeo in front of our home crowd would be great.”

Alfa Romeo, like many other teams, is bringing a series of upgrades to the C43 to this weekend’s event. Zhou expects to see some improvement to the car thanks to the work that has been done back at Hinwil, and believes the improvements will pay off on the track.

“Finally, there’s upgrades coming,” said Zhou. “The new package should be reasonably good, a few tenths, I think. As a team we really need it, especially for the race pace, we struggle a lot.”

Race pace is where the drivers are hoping to see the biggest advances. Bottas was able to advance to Q3 last time out, but struggled to make things happen over the course of the Miami Grand Prix. “We already showed some progress in Miami, where our single-lap pace was definitely better than in previous races, but there is still work to do,” said Bottas in the pre-race media report. “We must keep pushing forward, aiming to continue improving in both qualifying and the race.”

Alfa Romeo Head of Track Engineering Xevi Pujolar outlined the areas where the C43 lags behind the field. “We don’t have any specific corners where we’re struggling,” Pujolar said to Motorsport. “If you look in Melbourne and Baku, we were struggling on the straights, but we struggle in the corners as well. It’s everywhere, and that’s the area where we’re pushing the envelope in all areas. Not only with the car, but also with the operations, with the drivers.”

However, while Alfa Romeo is bringing some upgrades, Pujolar concedes they are not alone.

“We’ve got a package for Imola. And hopefully, that will also help. The problem is that I’m sure everyone will have a package in Imola, so we’ll have to see,” he added.

The planned upgrades are just one reason for hope in Hinwil. Their success from a season ago is another. Last year’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was a sprint race, and Bottas was able to qualify in eighth place for the sprint. He went on to finish in seventh in the sprint race, securing a pair of points for the team and putting him in P7 to start the Grand Prix itself.

Bottas finished in fifth place on Sunday, a critical result for the team at the end of the season. Both Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin ended the year with 55 points, but Bottas’s fifth-place finish in Imola served as the tiebreaker to push Alfa Romeo into eighth place in the Constructors’ standings.

“I have good memories from last year in Imola: it was our best result of 2022 and one that proved to be very important by the end of the season,” said Bottas.