Valtteri Bottas has urged the Sauber Formula 1 team to introduce “bigger upgrades” amid its pointless start to 2024 continuing at last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Sauber once again trailed home outside the points positions in Montreal and remains the one team still awaiting to score in the Constructors’ Championship this term.
Another double Q1 elimination prompted the Hinwil-based squad to elect to start both cars from the pit lane in order to escape parc ferme and make set-up alterations.
But having crossed the line 12th out of the 15 drivers who took the finish, Bottas has stressed that Sauber must bring more updates to eradicate the deficit to its rivals.
“We need to keep making the car faster, we need to keep bringing upgrades,” explained the 10-time race winner.
“There’s some plan for the future, but we need bigger upgrades and more of them. I think that’s the key honestly.”
The Finn conceded the more promising result was “due to other cars making mistakes” as he insisted that pace-wise Sauber is “still not in the top 10 at the moment”.
Expanding on how his race went, Bottas applauded the decision to make changes to the car to run more downforce as it helped in the changing weather conditions.
“I think with the conditions we had today it was probably the right thing to do, to try and do something. I think it helped a bit, we had a bit more downforce,” he said.
Meanwhile, team-mate Zhou Guanuu, who crashed twice through practice and trailed home as the last classified runner, admitted that he struggled with his C44 car.
Zhou even suspected that something was amiss and explained the team would review at the team’s headquarters located at Hinwil to look for potential car failures.
“Another tough race, obviously [the pre-race changes] didn’t really solve the issue,” the Chinese driver commented.
“There was quite a bit going on but for me it was a bit [of a] lonely race, especially during the second stint, [I was] just kind of driving alone.
“Not the smoothest weekend, but we have something already planned in the factory to be checking [if something was wrong with the car].
“This weekend I don’t really have much confidence altogether with the car,” he concluded.
