02/03/2024
NEWS STORY
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber delivered a strong race under the Sakhir floodlights, as it emerged as the sixth force of the championship in a tense Bahrain Grand Prix.
In a race with no retirements, Zhou Guanyu climbed to 11th place, courtesy of a faultless performance, leading the midfield to the chequered flag. Valtteri Bottas's race was unlucky: a strong start off the line was in vain, as the Finn was an innocent part of the Turn One clash between Hülkenberg and Stroll. Despite the resulting front wing damage, Valtteri delivered a consistent race, only to suffer a cross-threaded nut at the pit-stop, which ultimately put him in P19.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: "We delivered a very consistent race today, and we demonstrated to be the sixth team in the championship in race conditions. This result must give our team confidence and encourage us: it is possible to take further steps and improve our performance. In particular, making progress in our single-lap performance, even before Jeddah, would give us a stronger chance to fight for the points. Zhou drove a strong race tonight, making no mistakes and matching Stroll's Aston Martin for most of the race, which is a very good sign for the season ahead. Unfortunately, Valtteri was unlucky as his good start came to nothing when he got caught in someone else's accident at Turn One: he suffered damage to his front wing flap, and we saw the loss of performance that caused, which prevented him from fighting for higher positions. The problem in the pit stop, when he suffered a cross-threaded nut, put an end to any hope of recovery, but he was still able to deliver a strong final stint, which was a good reference for Zhou's tyre management. Even in these difficult conditions, we played as a team. I want to pay tribute to the team: after yesterday's difficult qualifying, which did not reflect where we think we are in terms of overall performance, we made an improvement today, also thanks to both drivers' performances. We now need to focus on the next step: we know the areas of our car we need to improve: if we keep working like we did in the last few weeks, there will be opportunities soon."
Valtteri Bottas: "Unfortunately, today just hasn't been my day. I had a good start, but then I got caught up in the Turn One incident between Nico [Hulkenberg] and Lance [Stroll], which resulted in front wing damage that made me lose some ground and performance. On top of that, we had an issue with the wheelnut during my second pit stop, which made us lose some more time. Luck wasn't on our side today, but hopefully that's all the bad luck for this season. As a positive to take home with us, our pace was definitely better than that of our main competitors - as seen with Zhou, who nearly finished into the points. This shows we have a better race car than last season, and gives us confidence looking into Jeddah next week."
Zhou Guanyu: "Today, we maximised everything we could, and I am happy we were able to fight so closely for the points. We had a clean race with a good start where I was able to make up some positions, but it was quite challenging to keep the Aston Martins behind without compromising our tyres. Luckily, I managed to keep Kevin [Magnussen] and the rest of the field behind me. We made progress over the weekend, and the team worked hard to find the optimal setup. Unfortunately, in a race with no attrition, we couldn't get points without anything happening to the cars ahead of us. There is still a lot to improve for us, and we'll continue working on our performance to be able to compete even more strongly for points in Jeddah and in the upcoming races."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Bahrain here.