21/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber fought hard in the Hungarian Grand Prix, but unfortunately had no points to show for its effort. Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu delivered solid races, but struggles in race trim meant they weren't able to fight for a place in the top ten. Still, with the updates brought to the car showing their worth and an uptick in one-lap pace, the team is showing improvements.
With one race left before the summer break, the team will head to Belgium to continue making progress and fight its way back into the mix for points.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: "Today's race has been quite a difficult one for us: we unfortunately had the confirmation that both our race pace and our consistency across different tyre compounds are not sufficient to fight for the points right now. We knew this from Friday, when the race simulations showed that, compared to our direct competitors, we had more degradation and that we were lacking pace. Today's race was just not as good as we wanted, although we tried to differentiate the strategies of our drivers, pitting Zhou earlier to potentially create gaps for Valtteri. After the positives we saw in qualifying thanks to the new updates, there is still performance to be found in race trim and especially in dirty air. We saw Valtteri do some overtaking maneuvers, on Ricciardo at the beginning of the race and on Sargeant and Ocon at the end, when he finally ended up chasing Magnussen. It didn't change the end result for us, but we saw we could fight with our rivals on track. It was hard for Zhou: we chose to pit him earlier to cover Magnussen, Ocon, Alonso and Ricciardo: we knew the second and third stints would be hard for him, but in the end, pace wasn't there for him either. On a positive note, all four pit-stops today have been consistent and fast: it is testament to the hard work done by our people, mechanics here at the track and design office in Hinwil, to fix the issues we had earlier in the season. With this spirit, which shows we can react and improve with the work of everyone in the team, we need to look forward to the next races. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but it's work that will pay dividends not just after the break, but also in 2025."
Valtteri Bottas: "In the end, there just wasn't enough action around us to make anything out of this race. Sometimes we got a bit unlucky with the timing of the blue flags, and lost some time as a consequence, but the main issue is still the lack of race pace. We don't have enough to make it into the top ten on merit and today, with the straightforward race we had in the midfield, we couldn't go anywhere. The race had actually started ok, but once it all stabilised, we couldn't keep up with the RBs: we left our first stop quite late to have tyre advantage at the end but, as always, it's not easy to make progress even when you have tyre advantage. Still, it's been an overall better performance this weekend than in the last couple of events: the upgrades helped us and will do so in Spa as well, so we need to keep making progress in this direction. The team is improving, but we need to keep pushing all together to make another step forward."
Zhou Guanyu: "This weekend has shown that our one-lap pace made a step in the right direction; however, we don't see the same in terms of race pace. Today, my race was compromised after the first stop: the early pit stop was to cover our rivals and protect Valtteri, but it didn't work out as planned. It meant I had to manage my tyres, resulting in a lonely and uneventful race. While the new upgrade package on Valtteri's car indicates progress, we still struggle with high fuel loads, and neither of us had a chance to make it into the points. Our biggest task now is to stay focused and motivated as a team: we need to understand and learn more about the upgrade package when we both have it after the summer break, so we can start afresh, close the gap, and become more competitive."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.