Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu discuss what was an uneventful race for the team last weekend, as the team’s pointless streak continues.
Having once again failed to score points in the Italian Grand Prix, Kick Sauber are looking ahead under the watchful eye of incumbent Mattia Binotto, with the aim of improving the C44 before the end of the 2024 season.
Reflecting on a disappointing Sunday afternoon, Zhou Guanyu explained the team remains on the back foot in terms of overall pace, despite a marked improvement over the Dutch Grand Prix one week earlier.
“[It was a] smooth race but lacking some pace of course to move further forward” Zhou reflected. “Yeah tried a bit different, let’s say tyre choice compared to Valtteri [Bottas] and see how it goes but obviously there were no safety cars. In both ways it’s just quite a standard race, let’s say.
“I think, you know, if you compare to Zandvoort I think it’s difficult to be worse than that, but yeah clearly we are on the back foot of performance, off the pace. I think one lap pace this weekend, when the car is on the sweet spot the pace was good enough to fight for like P15 16-ish but we’re just on the borderline. Of course [we] need to be almost like a perfect lap as well. Yeah you still keep working on what we have obviously that’s what we have at the moment and let’s try to improve on that.”
When asked if he has high hopes for any upcoming races, Zhou explained that at present, the team are simply relying on luck to score points.
“I think we need a bit of luck for sure.” He said. “It’s difficult of course to just pray for the luck. I think at the moment we just try to focus on what we have, try to improve on that. Clearly I think at the moment we’ve got a different standard circuit layouts, we are still not really at the pace we wanted.”
Teammate Valtteri Bottas meanwhile was asked if the team’s improved performance in comparison to the Dutch Grand Prix was positive. The Finn explained that while it was an improvement, Sunday’s Grand Prix was relatively uneventful for him as he came home in P16 following a difficult 1 stop strategy.
“It is [an improvement].” Bottas commented. “I mean, we committed this morning to do one stop, started with the hard and go long, of course, hoping towards the end of the stint that there would be some help with a safety car or whatever action, but there wasn’t.
“But still, I think it was the right thing to do, to commit to the one stop, just do our own race, focus on the tyre management. It was quite a straightforward race, and actually not that eventful for me.”
He went on to explain that, while the C44 lacks overall pace, the balance of the car is quite good. Looking ahead to next weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Bottas explained that the long straights and short corners of the street circuit should suit the car, but stopped short of expecting a strong performance.
“I think here we’ve been in a decent place.” Said the Finn. “Even the balance of the car actually doesn’t feel too bad. It’s really the overall performance is not there, and that’s now the biggest thing really. Find more downforce and more efficiency, you know, especially in cornering conditions.
“Short corners [in Baku], it’s good for us. So, yeah, maybe it’s in our lines to this track. But honestly, we’ve got two weeks to try and find something.”
