The appearance of the car of the Stake F1 team, which, according to the long tradition of Sauber, received the C44 index, suggests that Hinwil is increasingly focusing on the concept developed by Red Bull Racing, and many experts immediately drew attention to this . Among them is Mark Hughes, a famous British journalist who works with the official website of the championship.
In particular, on the C44, as on last year’s RB19, the front suspension is based on rods, and familiar features can be seen in the shape of the radiator air intakes and the characteristic chamfer in the lower part of the side pontoons and their contours as a whole.
Ferrari still supplies the Swiss team with power units and all gearbox components, but Sauber develops and produces their bodies in-house, as well as all other chassis components.
Jean Monchaux, the previous technical director, started working on the C44 project but was replaced by James Key last year.
The move to a linkage front suspension is in line with the concept that Red Bull Racing and McLaren have been pursuing over the past two seasons, and it appears to be becoming a general trend. In 2024, only Ferrari and Haas did not switch to it. The C44’s rear suspension is based on the same balancers that work together with pushers.
The design of the front suspension, which uses rods, allows you to more effectively control the operation of the car’s aerodynamic body kit; In addition, due to the geometry of such a suspension, it is easier to find ways to counteract the “dive” of the front part of the car.
Presenting the C44 and its photos it is quite possible to see that the mounting points of the upper wishbones are positioned very high, while the lower wishbone is shifted downwards – this arrangement suggests that the designers were trying to achieve exactly this effect – to make the car as small as possible “I fell asleep” while braking.
This behavior of the car during intense decelerations is quite natural, but in theory this tendency should manifest itself much less in the case of the C44 than in the C43 – therefore, the aerodynamic body kit should generally work more stably. This also provides a lower ride height at the rear of the car, resulting in an improved ground effect.
Steeply sloped rear sidepods and Red Bull-style radiator inlets are designed to prevent unwanted airflow from the top and bottom of the pontoons – the underflow should only be directed towards the edges of the bottom.
Stricter requirements on the strength of the upper roll bar (following Guanyu Zhou’s spectacular rollover crash at the start of the 2022 British Grand Prix) saw Sauber redesign the assembly and return to a more traditional A-shape.
The front wing shown at the presentation is practically no different from what we saw on the Swiss team’s cars at the end of last season, but this is certainly not the final version. Likewise, Sauber tried to draw as little attention as possible to the edges of the C44’s underbody.
In this context we can quote an excerpt from another text dedicated to this car, written by Gary Anderson for The Race: “There is an old expression: “We only saw what they showed us.” It’s safe to say that the car that hits the track on February 9 (on this day the Stake F1 Team will hold a first run-in and an official shooting day in Barcelona) will already be very different.
The most important thing now for the Swiss team is to focus all their efforts on organizing a more efficient process for upgrading equipment throughout the season. Then Audi will believe they did the right thing by betting on Sauber in their 2026 project.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
