2024 Miami Grand Prix – Saturday Report
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber missed out on a spot in Q2 for the tiniest of margins, as Valtteri Bottas ended up 0.010s outside the cut-off time of Fernando Alonso, setting the 16th fastest time in the session. In a tricky session on an unforgiving Miami International Autodrome, teammate, Zhou Guanyu, had his final attempt ruined by traffic and was 20th at the end of Q1. He will start in 19th place tomorrow, owing to a grid penalty to Daniel Ricciardo.
A challenging day overall for the team, which also had a busy time in the Sprint race earlier in the morning: in a session that saw on-track incidents and numerous battles throughout the field, Zhou finished 11th, ahead of Valtteri in 14th. The Sprint showed that plenty of action can take place around this track, and both drivers – and the team – will be fighting to make up some ground in tomorrow showpiece event.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “We used the sprint race positively today as we improved our car balance and made a good step forward compared to the start of the weekend. The team was able to address the lack of pace in low-speed corners we saw yesterday and – although it’s difficult to overtake in a sprint race as it’s common to be stuck in a DRS train – we have seen that our race pace allowed both drivers to fight with their direct competitors. Zhou was able to stay ahead of George Russell throughout the entire sprint race without suffering any particular threat from the Mercedes driver. The qualifying session proved to be more difficult for us today: while the car balance was good, both drivers experienced lots of traffic for their final lap in Sector 1, which prevented them from making it into Q2. Nevertheless, we remain positive about our car balance and tyre behaviour and start with the determination to fight for points. While this will be difficult, we’ve seen the progress made by the team as we recovered from a disappointing start to the weekend. The team will aim for another step forward and play all cards to be in the position to fight for points.”
Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 02/Ferrari)
Sprint: 14th
Fastest lap: 1:32.462 (Lap 7)
Tyres: Medium New
Q1: 16th / 1:28.463 (6 laps)
“Nothing much happened to us during the Sprint this morning; I got stuck in a train right after the start, and that didn’t leave too much room to make progress throughout the laps. We used the Sprint to maximise our learnings in terms of setup, to come prepared for qualifying and the race. The resulting setup change made a difference, and the car definitely felt much better this afternoon. We had a clean first run, but then unfortunately got unlucky once again with some traffic on the second run. Still, we made a decent improvement through the weekend so far and got really close to the Q2 threshold – only missing out on it by just one hundredth. All in all, we still have a lot to play for tomorrow; our pace was decent today, and I’m positive that with a strong start and a good strategy, we can put ourselves in the battle for points.”
Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 01/Ferrari)
Sprint result: 11th
Fastest lap: 1:32.131 (Lap 7)
Tyres: Medium New
Q1: 20th / 1:28.824 (9 laps)
“The sprint race was quite uneventful for me: starting P17 meant that I was stuck in a DRS train where it was quite difficult to overtake, but we managed to make the most of other people’s mistakes. However, we’ve seen a promising progress compared to where we started the weekend in terms of race pace. This afternoon, unfortunately, the qualifying session ended earlier than we hoped, leaving me at the back of the grid for tomorrow’s race. I wasn’t able to get my last lap in with lots of cars trying to protect their positions – and even had to go side-by-side with Oscar [Piastri] into turn one, which cost me valuable time. If we had managed to have a clean final lap, we might have been able to fight for Q2. While the pace for single laps wasn’t there, the team will continue working hard, and I am positive that our race pace will allow us to make up some positions during the race, where fans will hopefully see some exciting overtakes.”
