Bottas encountered ‘quite a few issues’ in testing

Valtteri Bottas says the main priority for Alfa Romeo heading into the first race is to put a stop to their reliability issues.

Alfa Romeo were able to significantly increase their lap count at the Bahrain pre-season test compared to their troublesome Barcelona showing, but Bahrain ended on a low as Bottas ground to a halt in the closing stages of the afternoon session on day three.

The Finn appeared to be stuck in fourth gear, a problem his team-mate Zhou Guanyu had previously come across.

Bottas confirmed the team are still investigating what went wrong, but urged these issues must dry up once the season gets under way in Bahrain next weekend.

“I just lost drive,” he said when asked by reporters for the cause of his day-three stoppage in Bahrain.

“We are still looking at it but just lost drive, couldn’t shift gears and couldn’t move forward.

“So it wasn’t a great way to end the day, but the positive thing was we got some good running, mainly on high fuel.

“At the end we did a bit shorter runs and they felt pretty okay, and also the high-fuel runs actually quite promising in the way the car was behaving and how consistent stints I could do.

“So a good day for learning, but we’ve had quite a few issues last test and this test, so I think that’s the number one priority now to fix.”

Bottas managed to complete only 54 laps at the Barcelona shakedown, so further problems at the Bahrain test were certainly not welcome.

But he is a veteran of the Formula 1 grid now, so he does not believe these roadblocks will impact him very much.

The Finn has switched to Alfa Romeo for 2022 after five seasons at Mercedes, having helped the team to win all five Constructors’ titles on offer in that time.

“Of course I would have liked to have