The Spanish Grand Prix became the 15th race in a row in which the Sauber team failed to score any points. Long-retired founder Peter Sauber followed a long tradition of attending this stage of the championship, but his presence in the paddock did not help.
In the middle phase of the race, Guanyu Zhou reached 9th position at one point, but after the second pit stop he fell back to 13th. His Finnish teammate fared worse, although he started twelfth and seemed to give hope that he could fight for the points. But already at the start the Finn lost a few positions, and the tactics that the team chose for him (the first two segments of the distance on soft tires and the last on hard tires) did not justify themselves.
As a result, he finished only 16th, and even the Finnish press, trying to treat Valtteri’s situation with understanding, paid him almost no attention this time.
The same cannot be said about the Swiss team, with the tabloid Blick in particular writing that Sauber is unhappy with the Finn, quoting the words of an unnamed employee of the Swiss team, who literally said the following: “Bottas is afraid of starts, he just acts too cautiously! If Nico Hulkenberg had already been a Sauber driver, we would probably have already scored points this season.”
These words are said to have been spoken before the start of the race in Barcelona.
It’s hard to dispute the first statement, because Valtteri actually lost positions quite often in the early laps of races last season. As for the second, Hulkenberg will still have the chance to prove himself from next year, but yesterday he finished 11th, and in total he has 6 points, and he is regularly ahead of Kevin Magnussen, his teammate at Haas.
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.
