2024 Brazilian Grand Prix – Friday
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber headed straight into the action at the Brazilian Grand Prix, as an overcast sky was the backdrop for the sole practice session of the weekend and Sprint Qualifying. Valtteri Bottas set the 15th fastest time, qualifying to SQ2; on the other hand, the team mishandled the timing of Zhou Guanyu’s final lap, resulting in him being unable to set a new time and being classified 20th.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “First and foremost, we must apologise to Zhou, as we made the wrong call in SQ1, and he was unable to start his second attempt. A new lap would have given him the chance to improve his time with the track evolution—as we saw on Valtteri’s car with his improvement on the second push lap. Analysing what went wrong in the communication process is very important to avoid repeating such a mistake. For Valtteri, it was encouraging to see him clear the first part of qualifying for the second consecutive time, achieving P15 in SQ1 and holding that position in SQ2. That said, there’s still work to do on the car to find additional lap time, especially in the opening of the lap and in Sector Two, where we weren’t as competitive as we need to be for a stronger starting position. Tomorrow’s sprint gives us a chance to better understand tyre behaviour in race conditions and to see if we can better control tyre degradation on the race compounds. It’s also an opportunity to further improve the car setup and give back to Zhou what he lost out on today.”
Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 02/Ferrari)
FP1: 14th / 1:11.651 (29 laps)
SQ1: 1:10.861 (6 laps)
SQ2: 15th / 1:10.595 (6 laps)
“It was good to make it into SQ2 today, especially after a challenging start to the weekend. We found the track really bumpy, so we had to adjust the setup quite a bit for qualifying. I’m glad we did, though, because it taught us a lot about the setup direction for the rest of the weekend. The car feels more drivable now, though the balance still needs to be improved. We’ve got some work ahead of us for both qualifying and the race, but first up is the sprint from P15. We’ll try to maximise everything we can while also focusing on learning more about the setup for the main days. Making it into SQ2 was a positive step, especially since reaching that stage hasn’t been so common for us lately.”
Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
FP1: 20th / 1:12.883 (27 laps)
SQ1: 20th / 1:12.978 (5 laps)
“Today was definitely not our day. FP1 showed that the track is very bumpy and that we’ll have to work hard to find the right setup. Sprint qualifying was quite a disappointing session for me as, unfortunately, the timing for our final run was mismanaged. By the time I was in a position to start the lap, the chequered flag was already out. While it’s frustrating since it ruined our starting position for tomorrow’s sprint, overtaking is possible, and we’ll see what we can do. As for now, we need to understand what went wrong today: tomorrow is a new day to make things better.”
