A year ago, in Hungary, when competing in Formula 1 as Alfa Romeo, the Swiss team Sauber managed to pull off a small miracle: according to the qualifying results, Guanyu Zhou started from 5th position, Valtteri Bottas – from 7th.
Granted, a failed start still left them without points, but that’s another story. The Swiss press is naturally concerned about the Hinwil team, which occupies the last place in the constructors’ championship, but is forced to acknowledge the reality that is already in the headlines, the essence of which is: “There will be no new miracles in 2024.”
Heavy Pujolar, Sauber’s race director, speaks about the same: “Yes, last year we showed good results in qualifying, but during the race we had some problems. Of course, we still want to excel in one fast lap, but our main task is to try to earn points in the race.
A year ago we were very fast in qualifying for some reason, but I think this season there is a lot of noticeable change from race to race. So far we only know the results from the first practices, but as the weekend progresses the picture will change, so we are trying to find the optimal settings first.
In addition, our cars were in different configurations during practice, now we have to get the best out of both versions and then see what we can achieve in qualifying and the race.
Maybe the speed of our car is not so much less than our rivals, but we just can’t get the results we want. At the beginning of the season we did a little bit better in qualifying and racing, but then we were hampered by other problems related to pit stops, and then our rivals probably improved.
In terms of speed, they seem to have made a step forward, although the results are still very tight. We have to admit that we have more problems in slow and medium corners – on fast circuits we lose less. Although at some point even the teams in the middle of the peloton improved in fast corners, while we had problems due to the build-up.
“All this has affected the confidence of the drivers, so we continue to work with the car, trying to find a more suitable configuration that will allow them to drive more confidently and achieve better results. We have set ourselves these goals for the second half of the season as well.”
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.
