The Sauber world is in constant transformation, with the team divided between 2025 and the 2026 season, which will see the arrival of Audi. While attention is almost entirely focused on the future and the new cycle with the four-ring brand, 2025 represents a small test, and the ambition is at least to avoid repeating the difficulties seen last year.
It is no secret that Sauber’s 2024 season did not deliver the expected results, particularly due to the struggles in keeping up with competitors on the development front. After the early races of the season, plagued by pit stop issues, where there were real opportunities to score points, the team struggled with updates.
This was also due to the fact that part of the resources allocated for development was redirected to solve pit stop issues. However, this does not mean Sauber did not work diligently behind the scenes to turn the situation around, setting a direction for 2025.
The 2024 Updates Are the Foundation for 2025
The updates introduced towards the end of the season not only allowed a significant step forward in terms of competitiveness, enough to score the first points of the year in Qatar, but also laid the foundation for the next championship.
Reflecting on the recently concluded season, Xevi Pujolar, Sauber’s Racing Director, explained: “It’s not what went wrong, but what we didn’t have. I don’t think anything was wrong. It was just a development that came late, or later than we wanted. Competitors found improvements early in the season, while we arrived late,” said the Spanish engineer, confirming the delay in development.
“We knew what the limits were and what improvements needed to be made, but it’s not so easy to figure out how to reach that goal. This is something we’ve seen with other teams as well.”
According to the team’s estimates, the package introduced in Las Vegas was supposed to provide an improvement of about three-tenths, mainly due to the new floor. This estimate turned out to be close to reality, as the step forward was indeed significant, placing the C46 in the midfield.
The progress had actually begun before Las Vegas, as Sauber had also introduced mechanical updates to the front suspension and wings to improve front-end grip, one of the weak points of the car, but those modifications were unrelated to the floor development.
The Las Vegas floor, which was further modified in Qatar, worked as expected, providing not only increased aerodynamic load but also altering the car’s balance characteristics, making it easier for the drivers. An aspect Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou had complained about multiple times during 2025 was how complex the car was to drive, sometimes even unpredictable due to its excessive sensitivity to wind.
With the final package, the team made a step forward, and even Guanyu Zhou, who had suffered more than Valtteri Bottas from the poor balance of the C46, regained more confidence in the car, improving his position in the standings.
“The floor increased the downforce and changed the aerodynamic characteristics. And you can see that even with Zhou, we were quite sensitive to the car’s performance. For the way the car is now, Zhou has also made a step forward,” added Pujolar.
The Transition to Audi, but Without Losing Face
However, this does not mean there is not still a lot of work to do for 2025. The car has some still-pronounced weaknesses, starting with the lack of aerodynamic downforce in high-speed corners, one of the Achilles’ heels since the beginning of the year.
Even in Qatar, a track with mostly medium-high-speed corners, where setup work is easier, the C46 showed its strength more in the first two sectors than in the third, which is more demanding in terms of lateral loads. This demonstrates that, although the floor did help improve performance in the slower and medium-speed sections, much more work is needed on the faster sections.
Moreover, it will be essential to reduce the car’s sensitivity to both crosswinds with a revised aerodynamic platform and to ride heights, as this has often been a limiting factor in performance.
Although Technical Director James Key had promised changes when the C46 was unveiled, Pujolar explained that the 2025 car would not be a complete overhaul and that all the work done towards the end of 2024 would serve as the foundation for the next car, having established the direction to follow: “What was done at the end of 2024 gives us confidence because now there is a direction. We’ve seen how all the teams are struggling to find extra performance. With these regulations, one must be very cautious, it’s easy to make mistakes.”
Creating a Winning Mentality for the Future
Although the team is focused on 2026, this does not mean it wants to repeat the difficult season experienced in 2025. On the contrary, the goal is clearly to avoid it. Mattia Binotto, in his first public appearance at Monza in his new role as project leader, had clearly stated that the team’s status and its performance were not acceptable and that much more was expected.
From this point of view, speaking in Abu Dhabi about what this team needs to make a step forward, both technically and humanly, Mattia Binotto emphasized that he agreed with Valtteri Bottas, who had explained that, from his point of view, the team needed to develop a winning mentality, as it had come from years of simply trying to survive financial problems.
“I fully agree with him. In fact, I believe that over the last ten years, the team has been in survival mode. So, in the end, it was about surviving, participating, trying to get the best. But having a winning mentality is a different approach. So, there’s definitely a lot to do,” said Mattia Binotto. The head of the Sauber group explained that the goal is to create a winning Audi team by 2030: a long-term target, built step by step.
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