Valtteri Bottas heaps praise on team-mate Zhou Guanyu’s debut F1 season

Valtteri Bottas has heaped praise on his Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN team-mate Zhou Guanyu’s rookie season in Formula 1 and believes his knowledge and understanding of the sport keeps getting better and better.

In an end-of-season interview with Autosport/Motorsport.com, Bottas spoke about a key attribute to his team-mate’s success in his debut season was his lack of mistakes.

“The biggest strength this year has been that he really hasn’t made any mistakes. It’s not guaranteed as a rookie, and it’s a sport where it’s easy to try too much and too hard and make silly mistakes.“

“Zhou has been good on giving himself some time to develop and not wanting things too quickly. He’s been able to progress step by step, both in qualifying pace and then in race pace.”

Alfa Romeo scored fifty-five points across the 2022 F1 season as they secured sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship. Even though Bottas scored forty-nine of those points, with Zhou only scoring six points in his rookie season, the Finish driver believes his knowledge and understanding of the sport continue to grow and get better.

“His technical knowledge is getting better and better, he’s getting more confident on choosing the set-up for him. It’s been good to see the progress.”

Bottas will team up with the Chinese driver once again for the upcoming 2023 season as their great relationship on and off track will be key to Alfa Romeo’s success going forward, with the team hoping that they can improve on last season’s standings this year.