2024 Monaco Grand Prix – Saturday
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber suffered a very difficult Saturday in Monaco, as both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu exited qualifying at the end of the first segment. They set the 19th and 20th times respectively in a very tight session.
The team continues to experience a challenging weekend, with Valtteri clipping the wall and suffering damage to his C44 in the opening lap of FP3. The crew in the garage did a fine job to repair the car in time for qualifying, but the time lost in the final practice session surely made the difficult job of progressing from Q1 even harder.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “Today’s not the time to analyse, but to react. Of course, tomorrow’s starting grid is difficult to digest for everyone in the team: the drivers, our trackside team, and the team back in Hinwil. What we can do is to react and prove that we are able to turn a page and improve – even in difficult times. Of course, we won’t avoid a thorough analysis of what happened today and why we have to start from the last row in Monaco. We have seen that we’re lacking overall performance, but there is not one single element that generates performance in a team. We understand that we need to take a step in every single area – and we know that it’s the most important thing to see from every member of our team to react and to not give up. It’s not a situation we can tackle without being motivated, determined, and willing to go through this job all together.”
Valtteri Bottas (car number 77):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 03/Ferrari)
FP3: 20th / No time set
Q1: 19th / 1:12.512 (11 laps)
“Today has been a tricky day in the office. I slightly touched the wall this morning during the final practice session; nothing major, as I was still able to take part in Qualifying later in the day. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough one-lap pace to make it past the Q2 threshold – that was pretty straightforward. Overall, it hasn’t been an easy weekend for our team so far. Monaco is one of the most challenging tracks on the calendar – that’s both its best feature and what makes it so demanding. There will be plenty to investigate overnight, to find that extra step that could allow us to slightly improve tomorrow. Things should be a bit better in the race, once everything stabilises, even though it’s not going to be an easy one starting from the very back. Still, not all hope is lost; we know very well how anything can happen here, and we’ll make sure to be at our best to catch any good opportunity.”
Zhou Guanyu (car number 24):
Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)
FP3: 19th / 1:13.830 (28 laps)
Q1: 20th / 1:13.028 (11 laps)
“The whole weekend has been difficult so far, and today’s qualifying session was no exception. We weren’t able to get everything – from tyres to temperature – in the right window today, and I struggled a lot with a lack of grip. On such a track, you need confidence and grip to extract most out of your laps, and while I reckon that my efforts were quite clean, we’re still a second off. In Monaco, Saturday matters most, however, the race is always a different story, and we’ll use it to better understand what we’re lacking to close the gap. As a team we’ll look further into our setup to see how we can improve ahead of tomorrow.”
