The Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was the next phase of the season in which Sauber drivers failed to earn points. The car still lacks speed and the conditions during the race were such that the tactics chosen by the Swiss team did not yield results.
Valtteri Bottas (18th): “Today we tried to achieve something through tactics, so we made a pit stop quite early. On the one hand it is good that we made such an attempt, on the other hand the second part of the distance turned out to be too long.
In the last ten laps the tire performance dropped sharply and it felt more like skating on ice than racing. The team should continue to modernize the car and bring more new products to the race. Maybe then we can show better results in qualifying and be in a more favorable position.
We have taken a small step forward in preparation for this weekend, but we obviously need to make further improvements to qualify for points. The team is working intensively on the next set of updates, which should be ready for the upcoming phases.
In addition, we will make some changes to the car before the Monaco Grand Prix, taking into account the characteristics of this circuit, where almost everything depends on the results of qualifying. To get the chance to compete for points, it is important to do it as well as possible.”
Guanyu Zhou (15th): “At the start of today’s race there was little action, but towards the end there was some recovery. We hoped that the safety car would come out, because we thought that our tactics would really work. Even though this didn’t happen, we were still able to achieve something.
We were quite good at controlling tire wear and gaining back positions. Unfortunately, most competitors followed the same one-stop strategy as us, and it is difficult to overtake on this track. With no incidents during the race, we couldn’t get close to the top ten, especially as the pace was still lacking.
The next stage of the season takes place in Monaco, where the track has completely different characteristics, and sometimes it happens that the car suddenly starts to work more efficiently in such conditions. The team continues to prepare new products and in all upcoming races we want to give everything in the hope of earning points.”
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.
