“There are no excuses for today,” said Sauber boss

May 3, 2024 9:14 pm

The Sauber team (Stake F1 Team) had a tough day at the Autodromo Internacional de Miami as the team faced challenging conditions in the Formula 1 Miami GP Sprint qualifying session. Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas set the 17th and 18th fastest times of the session, a result that will make it difficult to score points in tomorrow’s Sprint race.

Alessandro Bravi, team boss: “There are no excuses for today. When we finish 17th and 18th, it’s clear that we lost something in terms of preparation and execution. We could tell from the morning that we needed to improve the balance of our car, especially in the low-speed corners, but we weren’t able to take enough of a step forward to fight for Q2. We didn’t have the cleanest laps and the traffic also contributed to a performance that is disappointing and which we feel doesn’t live up to our true potential here. We continue working to improve our car, our performance, our operations. Our focus is on qualifying for the GP, where we want to get both cars into Q2 and see what we can achieve. Nothing is committed yet, and today was difficult, but the weekend is still long. We need to work hard tonight, analyze everything and improve every aspect of our performance,” he concluded.

Bottas: “Today was a very challenging day. We made big changes in terms of balance after FP1 and the car felt very different. There was also a sort of reset of the track and it felt like we were losing some grip. Also, unfortunately I got stuck in traffic on my way back. I left the track after a fierce dispute with a McLaren, the tires never recovered. Tomorrow’s starting positions for Sprint are definitely not ideal. There is still a lot we can learn about the car, and as it is still early in the weekend, we can try to reverse that for Sunday’s main event.”

Zhou: “Unfortunately, today did not go as we expected. We weren’t happy with how we were doing this morning during FP1, and although we were able to resolve some of those issues, we weren’t able to balance the car correctly for Sprint qualifying. I struggled a lot to find grip, which made it difficult to try and get out of Q1. Let’s investigate the cause of this. Tomorrow’s Sprint race is actually an opportunity for us to learn more about our race pace. It is positive that we can reset before qualifying for the GP and take a step forward with our performance”, added the Chinese driver.

F1MANIA.NET follows the Miami GP ‘in loco’ with journalists Victor D. Berto and Rodrigo França.

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