Bottas Already Sees ‘Potential’ of Growth and ‘Progress’ at Alfa Romeo ahead of 2023 Season

Valtteri Bottas says there is a lot of potential at Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN, and they can go far under the leadership of Audi Sport when the German marque take over the running of the team in 2026.

Bottas joined Alfa Romeo in 2022 after five years with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, and he helped the Hinwil-based team secure sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

The Finn acknowledges that Alfa Romeo are one of the smaller teams on the FIA Formula 1 World Championship grid at present, but there are a lot of people that are assets to the team, on top of facilities that are great and offer potential of growth.

And with Audi coming in to take over, Bottas sees no reason why the team cannot make a step forward and bring themselves into the title picture at the front of the field.

“Absolutely, all of the potential is there that I’ve seen with the people,” said Bottas to Racer.com. “It feels like quite a young team and there’s lots of people that think outside the box, which is good. Facilities at the factory are great, the wind tunnel is great…

“For sure it is on the smaller side as a team in terms of the people if you compare it to Red Bull or Mercedes, but I know there will be progress made on that, so having a few more people and maybe a bit more money will make a difference.

“For example, on the production of the parts, the lead times (in 2022) were quite long — fixing that kind of thing can make a big difference for the season.”

Bottas admits he was keen to use the experience and knowledge from racing for a multiple championship-winning team to benefit Alfa Romeo, and he feels he was able to give some good inputs, at least at the beginning of the season.

“Of course I’ve tried to take everything from my past experience, whether it’s technical or whether it’s operational,” Bottas added.  “That was I think a bigger thing in the first half of the year.

“Always when I saw something I’d say, ‘The guys on the other side of the paddock think like this.’ But even mechanically in the car I was able to implement some setup tools that I used to have in previous cars but not in last year’s car.

“So of course you take all the experience you can.”