Valtteri Bottas and the Sauber team are facing a harsh reality check after a disappointing start to the Swiss outfit’s 2024 F1 campaign.
Following a frustrating 2023 that saw Sauber plummet to ninth in the constructors' championship, hopes were high for a strong comeback this year.
However, those hopes have been dashed for now. Two races into the season, Sauber's completely revamped C44 car hasn't delivered the expected performance, leaving the Hinwil squad languishing at the back of the grid.
Bottas and teammate Zhou Guanyu brought up the rear in last weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, a stark reminder of the team's struggles.
Shedding some light on Sauber’s troubles, Bottas revealed that the team is currently battling with severe tyre warm-up issues, which forced the Finn to make an additional pit stop compared to his rivals in last Saturday’s race.
This highlights a fundamental problem with the car's setup or design that needs urgent attention.
“We thought for us going softs and hard would be the best, trying to be aggressive with the stop lap, but in the end, the issue was the hard compound,” he explained.
“We couldn’t make it work, we couldn’t create enough temperature and it took like at least 15 laps to get some kind of temperature and by that time we’d lost too much.
“So, that was unexpected and, actually, that’s why I did two stops, we tried the softs at the end to see if it worked better, it did but it was too late.”
©Sauber
Bottas reckoned that Pirelli had perhaps gone a little “too hard” by including its C2 tyre in its selection for Saudi Arabia.
“It was basically this C2 compound, I think for this track they are just too hard,” commented the Sauber charger.
“We thought that was because of the set-up issues on Friday when I tried them, but it wasn’t that.
“Even now with the improved set-up we couldn’t make them work, so, a bit of a calculation error there.
“I think it the end it was the same with Zhou, obviously he had a slow stop, like me in the last race, but still I think our pace wasn’t what we thought it could be.
“It was quite clear today that it just didn’t work. The Soft compounds were way better, so I think with our car it’s still difficult to generate a lot of energy into the tyres,” he added.
“That’s probably why the race pace was quite good in Bahrain, because the tarmac is rougher there and you kind of need to keep the tyres cool.
“But with a tyre like this we just felt we couldn’t generate enough temperature.”
It’s clear that Sauber’s much-anticipated overhauled C44 hasn't delivered the performance upgrade it expected.
But Bottas suggests that Sauber's struggles go beyond its car’s raw pace, pointing to operational weaknesses that have also hampered their results.
A glaring example was the front-left wheel nut issue suffered by Bottas in Bahrain and that cost the Finn a ruinous 50-second pitstop. Worryingly, the same issue resurfaced during Zhou's attempt to climb the field in Jeddah, putting a halt to his progress.
The team therefore needs to address both the car's fundamental performance limitations and tighten up their operational execution if they are to climb out of the back of the midfield.
“Obviously it’s only race two out of 24, and we have some things coming in the pipeline but we definitively need to improve not just the pace but also on operational,’ Bottas said.
“We’ve now had both drivers having both issues in two races.”
The ten-time Grand Prix winner has urged his team to gets it affairs in order ahead of next week’s Australian GP in Melbourne.
“I think we’ve got some bits coming for Australia, and now at least we have two weeks to try and solve the pit stops issue we have,” he revealed.
“I think it was the same issue with Zhou with the cross threading, so that’s something we need to fix because even if we make the car faster, if we have long pit stops, it’s not ideal.”
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