Alfa Romeo confirm ‘fuel system issue’ halted Bottas

Valtteri Bottas ground to a halt in Hungary, Alfa Romeo confirming that a “fuel system issue” was to blame.

On Lap 68 of 70 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Bottas brought his Alfa Romeo C42 to a stop, triggering the Virtual Safety Car.

Heading over to the media pen after that disappointing conclusion to the race, Bottas cited a “technical issue” as the reason for his retirement, but Alfa Romeo team boss Frederic Vasseur would shed some extra light on what went wrong.

LAP 68/70

Bottas has "no power" and parks up at the side of the track

Virtual Safety Car #HungarianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/Ln8P4vYRdk

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 31, 2022

“A day that promised much at its beginning left us disappointed in the end,” said Vasseur in an Alfa Romeo statement.

“The start put us on the back foot, losing five places with both cars and setting up a tough afternoon to recover some points.

“Valtteri was able to break into the top ten and was there until the closing stages, but in the end a fuel system issue meant he had to retire with a couple of laps to go.”

Alfa Romeo had hoped to execute a one-stop strategy with Bottas, but as several other drivers found out, the hard tyre simply was not a good race tyre at the Hungaroring.

“We committed to one-stop with the medium and hard [tyre],” Bottas told reporters.

“And towards the end of the race I felt it didn’t work as planned, but we tried, and it was tricky to back out, but I think ultimately the hard tyre didn’t work quite as well as I thought it should.

“But, in the end we had a technical issue, had to stop the race.”

Bottas and Alfa Romeo have been no strangers to reliability troubles this year, Bottas admitting that it is something which will require “high focus” to fix.

“It’s not consistent