Valtteri Bottas believes he can win races with Alfa Romeo after a strong start following his Mercedes exit.
The Finn was with the Silver Arrows for five years and wanted to extend his stay, but the team decided fresh blood was required and promoted George Russell from Williams. After such loyal service, Mercedes were keen to keep Bottas in the sport and helped him secure his current seat at Alfa Romeo.
He hit the ground running, scoring eight points at the Bahrain Grand Prix and extended his record of Q3 appearances to beyond 100. That record streak has since come to and end, but Bottas has scored points at all but two races so far, to build up a total of 46 which has him eighth in the standings.
Despite showing the ability to score well on most race weekends, Alfa Romeo are some way off being able to compete with the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull for race wins. But Bottas believes that might not remain the case for much longer as the team has a good "base performance" upon which it can build.
"We're not at the peak," the 32-year-old told Motor Sport Magazine. "I can see that and the people know it, that we still have so many things that we can do better. At least we know for a team like this, with the budget cap it makes things so much more equal.
"So you know as a fact that there's opportunities, like in the past if somebody had £200m more budget than you, it would be a bit of a mountain to climb. But now it's realistic that we can do better than this and in the future we can score podiums, we can even fight for race wins. I truly believe that, but that needs a lot of work and that's why I'm here."
The 51 points scored so far is already more than Alfa Romeo managed during the entire 2021 campaign, and an indicator of how well the team has adapted to the new era of technical regulations. Bottas admitted even he had not expected some of the results he has managed after so little time with the team.
"Results wise, no big expectations for the first year but actually, we realised pretty quickly that once we had the reliability, with the car we actually have pretty good base performance," added the 10-time F1 race winner. Some tracks we're really almost up there fighting with the big teams and that's been so amazing in a way that it's not maybe something I quite expected for the first year, but I knew the potential was there."
