Despite technical updates in Imola and Monte Carlo, the Sauber team suffers its worst defeat – and doesn’t know how it could have happened …
After qualifying, it is unlikely that the Sauber team will score its first championship points of the 2024 season in Monaco of all places. No other car was slower than the C44 on the streets of Monte Carlo, and the fact that Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou don’t have to start from the back row is only thanks to sloppiness at Haas and the disqualification of Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen
Bottas finished 17th in the official results, 0.452 seconds behind Sergio Perez in 16th place. What Sauber suffered on Saturday is the biggest qualifying failure for a team in years. And the worst thing about it is: “We have no idea what the reason is,” sighs Bottas.
Zhou, who was half a second slower than his team-mate, also reports that he made “no major mistakes”: “The balance wasn’t ideal. But what we lack is grip. When we switch to the soft tires, we don’t find one and a half seconds like the others, but maybe six to eight tenths. We simply weren’t fast enough.”
The team had recently developed updates under Head of Engineering James Key, brought a new underbody to the start in Imola (Zhou: performance gain “minimal”) and a new rear wing in Monaco. It now sits on one strut instead of two as before and is intended to represent the new direction of development.
“The new rear wing helps for this track,” says Zhou, but: “There is simply a lack of grip on all two axles. We slide a lot, over all four wheels, and it’s very easy to make a mistake. You can’t build up any confidence at the entrance to the corner. Which would be so important on this track.”
The fact that Bottas grazed the wall after just a few minutes in the final practice session and knocked off his front suspension “certainly didn’t help,” admits the Finn. He says: “I tried to find the limit.” And he was unlucky, because the bump didn’t look so extreme that the suspension had to collapse immediately.
Bottas then drove behind – and he has no idea why: “I don’t have an answer. We can’t keep up on one lap. It’s not as if I could get much out of it. The balance isn’t that bad either. But it seems that we just can’t carry the same speed into the corners as our opponents. “
The Red Bull issue with the kerbs is also not the explanation as to why things are not going well at Sauber. Bottas clarifies: “The handling is actually okay. I don’t have the feeling that we are too unstable. We are much softer than we were a year ago. So the ground handling is not the problem we have.”
The drivers are therefore faced with a puzzle when it comes to finding the cause: “We brought a new rear wing, but that’s pretty much it,” Bottas wonders about the catastrophic performance. Zhou adds: “It’s strange. On other low-grip tracks like Mexico or Miami, we worked quite well.”
“Monaco,” says Bottas, “is a unique track. We have to learn from it. We thought we did last year, and the year before, in terms of mechanical grip. But none of that seems to help us. The feeling is actually a bit better, but the times are not. Now we have to see that the new parts we get for Montreal work.”
The Finn hopes that Monaco will remain a one-off slip-up: “It’s never been this extreme. I’m half a second down on the car in front of me. We’ve never had that before this season. I really hope it doesn’t happen again. It’s not as if we’ve made any dramatic changes to the car since Imola,” puzzles Bottas.
