Solving reliability problems the ‘main priority’ for Alfa Romeo after British GP failure, says Bottas

Valtteri Bottas says sorting out their reliability problems is the “main priority” for Alfa Romeo, after another mechanical failure saw him fail to finish the British Grand Prix.

At the first six races of the season, Bottas qualified well inside the top 10 and has scored points in all but three Grands Prix so far – so the Alfa Romeo C42 is clearly a quick car, but rarely has the Finn enjoyed a trouble-free weekend in which to fully show its potential.

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Several times already this year he’s had to contend with little or no Friday running because of various issues, and in Sunday’s race he was forced to retire the car before half distance because of a gearbox problem.

Immediately after the race, Bottas’ first concern was obviously for his team mate Zhou Guanyu, after the Chinese rookie’s big Lap 1 accident.

“Yes, it was big one,” he said of Zhou’s crash. “The main thing is he is fine. It was a big shunt, and I’m glad that nothing serious happened and that he has already been cleared by the FIA.

“After that, with the restart there were lots of opportunities today but unfortunately we had some issue with the gearbox so I ultimately had to stop to prevent further damage. It was unfortunate because we had good pace and we could have scored a big amount of points.”

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And the Finn said getting to grips with their reliability problems is top of the to-do list as the team look forward to Austria next week.

“It’s for sure the main priority for us at the moment – we seem to have quite a few issues so we really need to solve it because race pace was good and I was making good progress,” he said.