A Sauber in Q3
Kick Sauber continues to show signs of improvement. Yesterday, the Hinwil team reached Q3 for the second time this season and achieved their best qualifying result of a very challenging year, thanks to Valtteri Bottas’s ninth place.
The final F1 weekend for the Finnish driver starts with promising prospects, as he aims to score his first points of the year—a goal that seemed unattainable just weeks ago but now appears within reach, as evidenced by Guanyu Zhou’s eighth-place finish in Qatar. The upgrades introduced in Las Vegas are clearly working and, more importantly, pointing the way for 2025, boosting the team’s confidence as winter approaches.
Valtteri Bottas’s words
“Obviously, I’m very happy with this result: making it into Q3 and qualifying ninth, our best of the year, is fantastic. It’s almost unexpected; it came out of nowhere,” Bottas commented. “I knew we might have a chance, but after a tough FP3, I had lowered my expectations a bit. However, in qualifying, I managed to piece everything together. Honestly, it was one of the best laps of my life. I’m really satisfied, and I owe a huge thanks to the team for making this possible. Tomorrow’s race will be interesting: we know it’ll be tough, but starting from here is the best possible way to give ourselves a chance to be competitive.”
Guanyu Zhou‘s words
“The qualifying session was disappointing because I believe we had a good chance of comfortably reaching Q2,” Guanyu Zhou added, starting 15th on the grid. “Unfortunately, when I exited the pit lane, I ended up at the front of the group, which meant I couldn’t benefit from any slipstream. That cost us some time, which we needed to make Q2—I didn’t gain much compared to my previous lap on all the straights in the second sector. I think we’ve shown we have good pace, and I’m confident I can recover some positions and fight for points once again.”
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