20/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber had a fighting afternoon in Austin as Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu battled hard in the United States Grand Prix, with the team's duo coming home in P17 and P19 respectively.
Despite some encouraging signs early on in the race, the event proved frustrating for the team, which can nevertheless look at some improvements in race pace.
With two more races in the Americas as part of this triple-header, the team will aim to come back fighting in Mexico City next week.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: "Today's race followed a similar pattern to the entire weekend, and we were unable to recover any places compared to our start positions. While Valtteri finished in P17 on a one-stop strategy, similar to the top 10 drivers, Zhou's spin at Turn One on Lap 10 led us to stay on a two-stop strategy for him to benefit for the tyre compound delta. In hindsight, we could have opted for a one-stop strategy immediately after Zhou's incident and pitted Valtteri a bit later than Lap 16. However, our strategic decisions were ultimately influenced by the team's race pace, as we observed more degradation than our direct competitors during the stints, especially towards the end. The race outcome is disappointing, and no one on the team is happy with the results; but we need to keep our motivation high and work hard to find a way back into the mix. We acknowledge the need to continue analysing the causes of our lack of performance and fight hard to go forward."
Valtteri Bottas: "As a team, we tried everything we could today, converting to a one-stop strategy based on the tyre performance and our competitors' races. It was right to try, as you never know what may happen later in the race, but it didn't work out as we had to extend our second stint a bit too long. While we could go the pace of our direct competition very early in the race, which is definitely a positive we can build on, we still lacked pace towards the end of the stints. We've made a step forward in race pace, but we still need to continue developing the car to address this deficit and improve our future performances."
Zhou Guanyu: "Today I had a really good start and made up quite a few places. The first stint went well, and I gave everything at the safety car restart, knowing the others were on the hard compound. Unfortunately - and I apologise to the team here - I carried too much speed into Turn One, hit a bump at the wrong angle and lost the rear when I tried to attack the cars ahead. After that, the pace was tricky in the second stint, and I experienced some drop-off where we need to understand what happened - but the first 10 laps felt quite promising considering where we've been in recent races. Ultimately, it wasn't enough today, but we'll keep pushing and come back stronger for the next race."