Stake F1 moved close to the top 10 thanks to Valtteri Bottas, on this first day of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The Finnish driver will receive a 5-place penalty on the grid for a mechanical change, but he welcomes the developments on the Sauber C44.
“The upgrades we made this weekend seem to be working as expected, which is a good sign that we have taken a step forward in the performance of the car.” Bottas said.
“While it's always difficult to say exactly where we will be tomorrow, we don't seem to be in too bad a position compared to the most recent races. The five-place grid penalty is a setback, but we will do our best what is in our power in qualifying to be as high as possible in the rankings.”
“Now it’s about finding more performance over a lap to improve our qualifying performance, while also working to strengthen our race pace, which has been a weak point for us recently.”
Guanyu Zhou finished the day in 16th position, and he admits it's difficult to find balance and confidence on the Las Vegas circuit: “In today's testing sessions we were able to collect a good amount of data. It's pretty crazy how low the grip is!”
“Although the track gets better from session to session, every time it resets it feels like ice skating. We tried different settings, and although I'm always looking for the limit, the “The balance is not quite there yet.”
“I'm sure we can work on it tonight: I know what I want from the car, and if we find a way to achieve that, there is potential to exploit. The conditions are tricky, especially in some corners, but it's a challenge of this circuit I'm looking forward to qualifying tomorrow, because anything can happen.
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