Valtteri Bottas finished 18th in the United States Grand Prix despite a one-stop strategy that aimed to wait out a possible incident late in the race. The Stake F1 driver is pleased to have had good pace at the start of the stint, even if his Sauber C44 lost performance at the end of the stint.
“As a team we tried everything we could today, adopting a one-stop strategy based on the performance of the tires and the races of our competitors” Bottas said.
“It was a good thing to try because you never know what can happen later in the race, but it didn’t work because we had to extend our second stint a little too long.”
“While we were able to keep pace with our direct competitors very early in the race, which is certainly a positive point to build on, we still lacked pace towards the end of the stints. We took a step forward in ahead in terms of race pace, but we need to continue developing the car to make up for this deficit and improve our future performance.”
Guanyu Zhou got off to a good start and reached 13th place, before spinning: “I got off to a very good start and gained quite a few places. The first stint went well, and I gave it my all when the safety car restarted, knowing that the others were driving on hard rubber.”
“Unfortunately – and I apologize to the team – I picked up too much speed in the first corner, hit a bump at the wrong angle and lost the rear trying to attack the cars in front of me.
“After that, the pace was difficult in the second stint, and I experienced a drop in speed where we have to figure out what happened – but the first 10 laps were quite promising considering what we did in In the end, it wasn’t enough today, but we’ll keep pushing and come back stronger for the next race.”
