Struggling Sauber F1 team needed Jeddah “wake-up call”

The Swiss outfit has twice been hit by expensive pitstop issues, with Bottas delayed in Bahrain and his team-mate Zhou Guanyu affected in Saudi Arabia.

In addition the C44 is not putting enough energy into its tyres which has compromised one-lap performance in qualifying and also left Bottas struggling on the hard compound during the Jeddah race.

“I think it needs to be a wake-up call,” said Bottas when asked by Motorsport.com about the team’s disappointing start to the season.

“Obviously, it’s only race two out of 24 and we’ve got things coming in the pipeline. But we definitely need to improve, not just the pace, but also operationally, now we’ve had both drivers having big issue on pitstops in two races.

“I think we’ve got some bits coming for Australia. Now we have two weeks to try and solve the pitstop issue. It was the same issue with Zhou with a cross threading.

“So that’s something we need to fix, because even if we make the car faster, if we have long pitstops then it’s not ideal.”

Bottas was one of only two drivers to start on the soft compound in Jeddah, along with Oliver Bearman.

The early safety car period sent most of the field into the pits, and having switched to hard tyres Bottas began to struggle. Later he made an extra unplanned second stop to return to softs, and he eventually finished 17th, beating only the delayed Zhou.

“We thought for us soft/hard would be the best, and try to be aggressive with the stop lap,” said the Finn.

“But in the end, the issue was the hard compound. We couldn’t make it work, couldn’t create enough temperature, it took at least 15 laps to get some kind of grip on it. By that time we lost too much.

“It was quite clear today that it just didn’t work, the softer compounds were way better. So I think with our car it feels like it’s difficult to generate a lot of energy to the tyres.

“That’s probably why the race pace was quite good in Bahrain, because the tarmac is rough, and you need to keep the tyres cool. On a tarmac like this [in Jeddah] it just felt like we couldn’t generate enough temperature.”

Zhou Guanyu, Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber C44

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Team representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi said there were some positive signs in Jeddah despite the tyre issue experienced by Bottas, with…