Drivers at Alfa Romeo and Haas admit reliability is their main concern ahead of this weekend’s opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Both teams have shown signs of significant progress during testing, with the two Haas drivers using extra running time granted due to a freight delay to finish at or near the top of the standings on Friday and Saturday.
However, both have equally had their share of stoppages and finished bottom of the combined lap count across the six days of pre-season, although Alfa Romeo did manage 150 laps on the final day to offer some encouragement.
Day 3 ?
Some issues still to be solved. But there’s good potential. That’s it for testing, ready to race next week ??https://t.co/54AmddsRow#VB77 #F1Testing #AlfaRomeo @alfaromeoorlen @alfa_romeo pic.twitter.com/hHjUirzJkJ
— Valtteri Bottas (@ValtteriBottas) March 12, 2022
Even so, Valtteri Bottas, who joins from Mercedes from 2022 onwards, admits the Swiss team does still have some problems to iron out.
“I’ll be more confident once we speak with the team next week and when I hear that all the issues we understand 100% and we make sure that they don’t happen again,” he conceded.
“At the moment now my biggest concern is doing a race distance, we’ve had multiple different kinds of issues during this test, but we’ve been able to fix them and we just hope there’s no new issues coming up.
“Otherwise, in terms of performance, my feeling, for now, is that the team has made a clear step from last year. And that’s nice to see. You know testing, we can’t say in detail, but it’s not far off where we should be.”
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At Haas, Kevin Magnussen was a late arrival in Bahrain after only being confirmed as Nikita Mazepin’s replacement on the evening before the action began.
And the Dane echoed many of Bottas’ comments when reflecting on the American team’s position.
“I think our main worry is reliability,” he said. “That’s not a situation you want, but it’s not such a bad situation.
“If what you are really worried about is just reliability…of course you always want your car to be faster and we will continue to work on that. But for now, we just need the car to get to the end of the race.
Race-sim laps locked in for K-Mag earlier on today ?
Here’s his summary of this morning’s action ⤵️#HaasF1 #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/0ppAqmwAzK
— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) March 12, 2022
“I think that’s kind of a theme in the paddock, I think a lot of people are trying to get their car reliable.
“But it feels good and it’s not been slow. It will be interesting to see where we actually are next week.
“Hopefully the team can find a bit more performance, a bit more reliability and then we can go into next week a bit more confident.”