The sight of Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo being dismantled in the garage due to an MGU-K problem on its Ferrari Formula 1 engine just minutes into first Monaco Grand Prix practice was a particularly sad one.
Not just because it’s not the first time Bottas has had a compromised Friday this year, but because this was the Friday he really, really didn’t want to be compromised.
Formula 1 2022 is closer, more open and more unpredictable than what it replaced – and the way the regulations are designed, F1 will only get more so over the coming years.
But for all that closer competition and shuffling of the pack, six grands prix into the new era, all the podium places so far have gone to the teams that finished in the top four in last season’s constructors’ championship.
You could point out key differences like Ferrari now generally being favourite, not an outsider, or Mercedes and McLaren’s troubles meaning that their podiums so far were really underdog efforts.
You wouldn’t be wrong. But we still haven’t seen a real full-on giant-killing shock yet.
Monaco surely offers scope for one. Its reputation for anomalies and surprises isn’t as strong as it once was – if you’re looking for ‘shock’ underdog Monte Carlo podiums in recent history you’ll only get Sergio Perez (pictured above) with Force India in 2016 and Robert Kubica for Renault in 2010 – but a season’s usual script does take some twists there.
It was a reliable banker for a Red Bull surprise in Mercedes’ dominant years, for instance – see Daniel Ricciardo’s 2018 win and near-victory in ’16, and Max Verstappen’s narrow ’19 defeat. It was Lewis Hamilton’s only truly uncompetitive race of 2021, and Ferrari’s best chance of a win on merit last year.
Now with all the uncertainties of what the still barely-proven 2022 F1 designs will do on a low-speed, less aero-dependent circuit, where bumps will demand higher ride heights and cars’ increased weight could be a cumbersome headache, the odds on some teams being conspicuously out of position this weekend have to be good.
And one team, in particular, seemed well-placed to topple some big names.
When he sat down with The Race’s Scott Mitchell for an exclusive interview last month, Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas picked Monaco as the race he was particularly looking forward to.
Revitalised by his release from Mercedes and Hamilton’s shadow, Bottas has scored points every time he’s finished a race this year so far.
“It should be nice,” he said of Monaco. “For now, it’s a pretty clear feeling that a track with more high-speed corners is going to be more tricky for us. At least with the car package we have now.
“But a track with more low speed corners, that should be our strength.”
Alfa Romeo’s pace upturn this year has been built on that low-speed corner performance. A touch of rear instability holds it back in high-speed corners. Yet that hasn’t stopped Bottas qualifying in the top eight at every race bar Melbourne, and twice in the top six. Take that car to a circuit where there are no high-speed corners to trigger its weak point and things should look pretty good.
We don’t yet know if that will be the case.
“It’s hard to say based on today,” admitted Bottas after managing a smooth practice two and going 13th-quickest.
“I think we are in the mix, it’s difficult to say more. It felt OK but maybe lacking a bit of performance. And, also, I still need more laps.
“Balance-wise it was not too bad, also for me FP2 was the first session of the weekend, so I was definitively taking it step by step and I’m sure there’s more from my side and from the car’s side to get out.”
Plenty will be hoping he can still hit the ground running going into qualifying on Saturday. The Bottas resurgence storyline already feels like a popular one both among F1’s fans and in the paddock too.
Some drivers who’ve been in a subservient or overshadowed role at a top team leave that experience with their confidence too battered to show their best form anywhere else, or lacking the motivation to find their ultimate limit when fighting for lesser rewards.
Bottas has instead thrived – and you get the feeling Hamilton and Mercedes would be the first there to congratulate him if he did get Alfa Romeo on the podium, given the ongoing close bond between the seven-time F1 champion and the man who supported him so well.
Given the situations Bottas and Alfa Romeo have come from – with Alfa having been ninth in last year’s championship and rarely able to think much beyond just making sure it wasn’t out in Q1 – a Bottas podium would be about the best advert F1 could want for the ‘competitive social mobility’ element of its 2022 rules revolution.
And given Bottas lost second there last year, on a weekend when he had Hamilton absolutely covered, to the painfully surreal problem of a wheel getting jammed on (and still being stuck on the car back at the factory 43 hours later), Monaco would be an ideal place for that breakthrough to happen emotionally.
Plus he comes there fresh from a Spanish GP that he mostly spent in a superb fourth place until Alfa Romeo’s decision to stay on a two-stop strategy as most around it swapped to three left Bottas too vulnerable to late charges from Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
How Bottas discussed that race straight afterwards said a lot about his and Alfa Romeo’s mindset right now too.
“When you are at those positions and things are going smoothly and you see things happening to other cars, you’re thinking that, ‘OK, it could be my day’,” he said, reflecting on the fact that with Charles Leclerc retiring, both Sainz and Verstappen going off and Hamilton having a first-lap collision with Kevin Magnussen, the top three teams were doing their best to lose the Spanish GP.
“But I think strategy-wise we took a bit of a risk today.
“We left the last stint to be very long, but in the end, it was too long, the tyres died towards the end. But we tried.
“Today we had the chance to choose ‘are we going to be the best of the rest or are we going to try something more?’
“So we tried something different and it didn’t work out, but the risk was pretty minimal and there was not that much threat from behind.”
‘Something more’ than being the best of the rest means being among the best. If there’s anywhere Bottas and Alfa Romeo can achieve that status in 2022, Monaco really could be it. If that lost FP1 doesn’t prove too costly…
Keyword: A Bottas Monaco podium is the result F1’s new era needs