With Kick Sauber firmly last in the Constructors’ Championship at the midway point of the season, failing to score points thus far, Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou reflect on the team’s race strategy for the British Grand Prix.
The British Grand Prix proved to be another disappointing event for Kick Sauber, with both Bottas and Zhou failing to score points. With the team clearly struggling both drivers have looked to the positives in the team’s organisation.
Speaking after the British Grand Prix, in which he managed to finish a lowly P15, Valtteri Bottas admitted that, although the team made the right calls on strategy during the difficult changeable weather conditions, the pace simply wasn’t there for a stronger finish.
“I think we got them right,” Bottas said when asked about strategy decisions made during the Grand Prix. “I think we were always one of the early ones to do the stops and we didn’t have to do any unnecessary stops. So I think from that side it was good.
“Yeah, that was my call [to change to slicks]. I thought we’d be good to try and maybe lost a bit in the beginning but we had to try something.
“Unfortunately in any conditions today we just didn’t have the pace to challenge any of the cars ahead.”
When quizzed about his own and his teammate’s difficult first stint, in which both drivers’ fell down the order to the back of the pack, Bottas explained he and Zhou had suffered different issues – in spite of what he called an okay start.
“Actually [the] start itself and first corners were okay,” he explained. “But I got pushed wide in turn four so that’s why I was at the back of the grid. Then it was just Zhou’s tyres. He was on the soft tyre, started to drop so we were [the] two last cars.”
Teammate Guanyu Zhou meanwhile, explained that the unpredictable conditions threw a spanner in the works for him in terms of strategy. With rain in the air, Zhou elected to start the Grand Prix on soft tyres, hoping for an early shower which would allow him to pit directly onto intermediates.
“Obviously it was quite difficult to predict.” Zhou said of the changeable weather conditions. “I think once we put on the soft, unfortunately it was okay until lap 8. We started going backwards by about lap 10 [the] rain didn’t come so we kind of had to make a decision. Either we change the tyre hopefully [so] that we can go to the end or there’s no other choice.
“When we changed the tyre again the rain came. We tried to gamble again to go inters so a lot of spending time in the pit lane since we compromise after the first one. At least obviously we gave it a try and was just quite a lonely race after that to be honest.”
When asked if he or the team had made the decision on tyre choice, Zhou explained they decided together to take a gamble in the hopes of maximising their potential.
“I mean after the medium run, before we go inters, we were deciding, you know, together we tried to gamble a little bit,” he explained. “You know, when we picked it for the bit, it only carpeted down to the median. Then when the rain came I was like okay it’s either we’re finishing last or if we go inters rain start dropping we can have a chance.
“We took that one so in the end it wasn’t enough [rain] for the tyres so you’re just spending a lot of time sliding around.”
