Despite a difficult start to the season, Bottas combative: “My job is to get the most out of the car”

Eleventh place in Guanyu-Zhou, during the first Grand Prix of this 2024 season in Bahrain, remains the Swiss structure's best result today. Where all the other teams have managed to score points, and to raise their level of play as the Grands Prix progress, the green and black single-seaters are languishing at the bottom of the rankings, and do not seem able to perform the not even ahead of their opponents. Only four points separate Sauber from Williams, but these units seem almost inaccessible for the team of Hinwil.

An observation shared by the team's road captain, Valtteri Bottas. The Finn clearly did not expect this decline in the hierarchy, after a 2022 season full of promise, and a year 2023 which has already shown a downward trajectory which could prove worrying for the future, mainly in the ten remaining rounds. to be played this year.

« It’s been a tough year for us”, he explained to the official website of the F1. “We still haven't scored a single point, which wasn't the goal at the start of the season. We wanted an upward trajectory from last year, and that hasn't been the case. We started the season with a car that wasn't easy to set up, and even pure pace-wise we weren't quite up to it. We've made some progress since then, but more in baby steps than big steps, unlike other teams around us. »

Make the car faster, before handing over to Audi

The old pilot Mercedes expressed his desire for the next ten Grands Prix, which must show a step forward on the part of the Saubers, even if this does not translate into regular points: “We have a clear direction, we have to make the car faster. UA lot of that obviously comes from the wind tunnel and the engineers and so on. But yes, I was happy with my performance and my job for the rest of the season is to squeeze everything I can out of the car every weekend. It's my job. »

The rise of Sauber, if it could only be anecdotal on an accounting level at the end of the season, is crucial for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Indeed, Audi is taking more and more control of the team, before enter for the first time as a factory team in Formula 1. The German brand is clearly not there to make up the numbers, but it is also seen by the structures already in place at Sauber as a rebound, because its program will be based largely on the knowledge already available in Hinwil in Switzerland. The recent upheavals in the hierarchy could provide Sauber with the necessary momentum to move up the hierarchy, before entering a new chapter in its history.