Valtteri Bottas was not shy in offering his opinion on Sauber’s poor performance at the Dutch Grand Prix, explaining the weather and circuit played to his car’s weaknesses.
The Finn endured a torrid weekend, finishing 19th, with team-mate Zhou Guanyu 20th, and were the only cars to be lapped twice by eventual winner, Lando Norris.
Sauber has been able to fight in the midfield throughout much of the season, but the strong winds and unique layout at Zandvoort caused a significant lack of pace from the car, with a shocked Bottas saying he “didn’t expect the performance to be this poor”.
“The start was actually OK and we were in a decent place compared to where we started from but after like five or six laps, I saw that I struggled to follow the pack,” he said.
“That’s when I knew that we didn’t quite have the pace. I was hoping that maybe with other tyre compounds things could be better, but it never did.
“We tried all the compounds, so it’s not the tyre, it’s the car. It just doesn’t work on this track.”
Bottas believed that the car’s issues were “highlighted” by the nature of Zandvoort, saying the “banked corners, with off cambers, cambers, plus the wind, it just really highlighted the sensitivity of the car.
“We’re really sensitive to crosswinds and tailwinds,” he continued.
“When you’re going through bankings and off-cambers and cambers, it’s even worse because the ride heights, they are not in the right window.
“So, the whole car is just too peaky, too much on the edge, it’s not really a stable platform and anything that distracts it like crosswind, it just makes things a whole lot worse.”
Bottas acknowledged that whilst the weather and circuit are particularly unusual for F1 races, he admitted it showed up a “long-term” problem with the car, adding: “I don’t think there’s a quick fix – but this track is quite unique and this kind of wind we rarely get.
“So I’m still optimistic that we can have better weekends and hoping that this was the outlier.”
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