Sauber is suddenly afraid of the pit stop

The harshness of everyday Formula 1 life is often expressed in a seemingly harmless industry saying: Stopwatches don’t lie! Often a few thousandths decide on the fastest lap or the pole position.

Races, placings and therefore more prize money are also won in the pit lane. Mandatory tire changes have long been a tactical means of overtaking a competitor. The record time set by the McLaren racing team for replacing all four wheels is currently an incredible 1.80 seconds. Red Bull, a champion team even before the garage, recently even made a perfect stop in the dark for advertising purposes.

The pit team of the Sauber racing team from Hinwil can only look with envy at the fast competition ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, which concludes the first quarter of the season on Sunday evening. Changing tires is a complex matter anyway, but Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas describes the recent events as “unacceptable”.

The Sauber team is in last place in the table with no points, although the C44 Ferrari is definitely a racing car with potential. But complications when changing tires regularly ruin your chances of scoring points. The events at the Australian Grand Prix were particularly disastrous: two of the four stops for Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas were already well over the three-second mark among the slowest in the field, then Zhou was in front of the pits for 20.2 seconds the car stalled.

Things fared even worse for the Finn; Bottas could only be dispatched after 31.18 seconds. Combined with Bottas’ 52-second stoppage in Bahrain and Zhou’s 29-second stoppage in Saudi Arabia, this is a black streak. The Sauber team managed five of the ten worst stops this season. The team management has already apologized to its racers, representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi says: “We need more consistency.” Our main goal is to avoid trouble.” These are statements that seem anything but satisfactory.

The cause is a technical problem

So far, Sauber has hardly had a race weekend without problems in the pits, which is turning into a trauma. It’s not like the team of mechanics forgot their job overnight. Rather, the increasing number of incidents in which wheel nuts get jammed and sometimes even roll through the pit lane show that this is primarily a technical problem.

The reason lies in the new vehicle design for the 2024 season. As part of the conversions, the wheel hubs and wheel nuts were also changed, which required new pit stop equipment. But suddenly it gets stuck somewhere. And the technical solution to the problem doesn’t seem to be that easy. A so-called cross-threaded nut on the front left of the wheel is the biggest concern for the Hinwil racing team. Apparently a light alloy is used, which was originally intended to make the car overall and especially the stops faster, so that Sauber could get closer to the top teams.

But so far exactly the opposite has been achieved. When unscrewing the nuts tilt slightly, which is probably related to the temperature of the hub. Since this is not a trivial problem, there is no quick solution. The fatal problem did not occur during the simulations and during the test drives, in which pit stop exercises are regularly carried out.

A simple return of proven old parts is not possible; they no longer fit the newly designed wheel suspensions. Engineers and suppliers have been working on the necessary changes for several weeks, but the new design and the subsequent metallurgical manufacturing and testing process eat up a lot of time during ongoing racing operations.

Sauber is in danger of losing touch with the midfield

In addition to the hardware, the crew’s processes were also changed. This also needs to be adjusted again. The mechanics were instructed to proceed with caution for the time being. However, this cannot be a permanent situation for a racing team that wanted to join the midfield this year and compete as an Audi factory team in the future.

The Audi governor in Hinwil is also concerned about the current situation. Sauber managing director Andreas Seidl has just announced the first positive change with the signing of Nico Hülkenberg as a works driver for the next two seasons.

The German was also poached by the Haas racing team because of his high level of technical understanding and his ability to work in a team. The engineer Seidl is of course particularly annoyed when details massively hinder the upswing on the racetrack. “We clearly have to do better,” says the Bavarian from the background. He therefore calls for more aggressive development beyond the season and thus faster production of the individual parts: “We want to show that we are on the right track.”

A final technical solution that literally gets the problems under control will only be available at the race in Imola in mid-May. Whether everything will be okay when a black and green racing car is called into the pits remains uncertain for a long time.