It was a disappointing qualifying session for Sauber as Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu narrowly missed out on booking a spot in Q2 for Saturday’s Bahrain Grand Prix by just over a tenth. Only 0.001s separated the duo.
Although final practice saw Bottas finishing in P10, he knew that making it through the first segment was going to be difficult after Friday’s running.
“But I didn’t expect us to be out in Q1, coming into the weekend, honestly. But we did see yesterday that we needed to make steps if we wanted to make it happen, but we couldn’t make enough [of them].
“[It was] very close, and actually yesterday we saw that we did struggle to get enough out of a single lap versus the long run. But there seems to be a clear gap in the performance, and today showcased that again.”
However, Bottas is convinced his C44 will be much stronger in the race and hopes to prove that in a few hours. The Finn explained that he also sacrificed ultimate qualifying performance due to the high degradation at the Bahraini venue.
“I’m really curious tomorrow [Saturday] to prove that is the case, that if we can have better race pace, then it’s definitely a priority to fix this single-lap performance. And especially in these cool conditions, it can be an issue.
“I feel like with the set-up that I have, I’m much more comfortable in the long run, because here it’s always the rear end that degrades, and now actually I did struggle with some mid-corner understeer.
“So I feel like yes, I could have probably set up the car better for a single lap to gain a bit more. But then in the race I would struggle, so it seems a bit of a trade-off.
“But again that’s what I need to discover tomorrow, whether that [the race pace is superior] is true or not.”
For Zhou Guanyu, a small error on his final run cost him one spot on the grid. However, he believes it didn’t cost him a spot in Q2.
The Chinese driver was left baffled by the balance of his car and will be sitting down with the engineers to try and figure it out.
“I think the mistake probably cost me P16, I don’t know how much I am [behind] P15. A tenth or more, I don’t think that was [in] the mistake. Unfortuantely it was difficult to find the pace.
“We actually expected to be knocked out in Q1 before quali. We need to find more with this package because it seems very difficult to get the balance right at the moment.
“We need to sit together, just working out the best configuration for the car because at the moment we’re clearly missing something compared to the others.”
While Zhou cannot pinpoint exactly why they are lacking pace, Zhou is sure they are a step behind their rivals when it comes to overall grip.
“It’s difficult to say right now because it just seems to be more difficult, let’s say, for us just to get one lap right.
“Even though we have a clean lap, it just seems the overall grip is a step less compared to the main midfield rivals.”
Bottas “curious to prove” Sauber will be stronger in the race at F1 Bahrain GP; Zhou laments lack of “overall grip to midfield rivals”
