2024 Italian Grand Prix – Friday report

Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber returned to one of the most iconic tracks in Formula One – the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza. Both sessions at the Temple of Speed were interrupted by red flags, but drivers Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were nonetheless able to collect valuable information for the team to fine-tune the set up for tomorrow’s qualifying.

Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
FP1: 5th / 1:22.127 (21 laps)
FP2: 11th / 1:21.461 (25 laps)
“It’s always nice to be back racing in Monza, and to do so with a pretty straightforward, productive day. We went through our programme as expected, and this allowed us to work on finetuning our car between the two sessions. We definitely seem to be in a better place on this track compared to Zandvoort, and the feeling is that Monza suits our car better – it was nice for all the team to have a positive day after last weekend. We won’t get carried away, it’s still Friday, and it’s just Free Practice: we need to make some more improvements ahead of tomorrow. We expect everyone will make a step overnight, and we’ll need to make one too; if we achieve that, we’ll at least be able to get in the mix.”

Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 03/Ferrari)
FP1: 15th / 1:22.854 (22 laps)

FP2: 20th / 1:22.223 (27 laps)
“It’s always a pleasure to return to such an iconic track and to take stock of the work that has been made on the circuit: clearly, a lot of effort has gone into smoothing out bumps and resurfacing the circuit, which made the early laps important to get new reference points. FP1 went well, but FP2 was a bit more difficult. We’ll look into it with the team tonight and try to be prepared for tomorrow. I believe there’s quite an opportunity to optimise the setup and extract more performance; and the performance of Valtteri, who has some upgrades on his car, is also promising. The team will put in a lot of work tonight to analyse the data and be ready for qualifying.”