After three stages of the season, Ferrari is confidently leading in both standings of the championship, while Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, for one reason or another, are lagging behind. One is plagued by reliability problems, the other has not yet been able to improve the efficiency of the new machine.
But starting from the first race of the European stage of the season, with the Grand Prix of Emilia-Romagna, the situation in the championship will begin to change, says Hevi Pujolar, Alfa Romeo’s chief race engineer. First of all, this is due to the fact that the pace of modernization of equipment will increase rapidly, including the new items will be presented by the team from Hinvil, which started the season much more successfully than in previous years.
“I think the modernization race will start from Imola, and we’ll see which teams will introduce the most new products,” said an experienced Spanish engineer who has been working in Formula 1 for more than twenty years. – Of course, we will also try to take part in this race. I think the next few stages will be quite interesting, and we will see how the teams are engaged in fine-tuning equipment.
We also strive to progress, because we want to close the gap with those who are ahead of us, and leave far behind those who are behind.”
The team’s confidence is underpinned by the good racing pace shown by Valtteri Bottas and Guangyu Zhou in the Alfa Romeo C42 cars. This allows you to partly compensate for not the highest results in qualifying, since both manage to win back positions at the distance of the race.
The Imola weekend will be the first this year to include a Saturday sprint. Pujolar believes that this will also help the team’s riders to show a high result: “You can say that the qualifying sprint format gives us a good chance. Let’s see who will present what innovations in Imola, but we hope that both of our cars will be able to fight for points.
It can be assumed that such a format will suit Zhou as well, as it will give him the opportunity to show what he is capable of. I think that he is a very good driver and thanks to the sprint he will be able to win a few more positions.”