Valtteri Bottas hopeful Kick Sauber bring updates ‘sooner rather than later’ after finishing outside the points again at Silverstone

Valtteri Bottas hopes that Kick Sauber will soon have new updates on their car after another weekend of finishing outside of the points at the British Grand Prix, with the Finn stating that this is what the squad “need” in order to challenge their rivals.

While there were positives from how the team handled the mixed conditions of the race at Silverstone, both cars were unable to put themselves in the fight for a top-10 position. Bottas crossed the line in P15 – making up one place from his grid slot – and acknowledged that the opportunities such weather can bring had not gone in his favour.

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“[It was] definitely not an easy day with sometimes being on the slicks in the wet – [there were] some wet sections on track,” he explained after the Grand Prix. “But I think we made actually the right calls today – we didn’t do any unnecessary pit stops.

“But, in any condition, we just didn’t have the pace today to challenge the cars in front. That’s what we need to keep working on and get some new parts in the car, and hopefully that’s going to be sooner rather than later.”

‘We just didn’t have the pace’ – Bottas hoping Sauber can bring upgrades soon

Pushed on whether upgrades are indeed on the way, Bottas responded: “There should be. I can’t promise there will be in Budapest, but I would hope so. That’s what we need.”

The afternoon was also a challenging one for Zhou Guanyu, who was amongst those to take an early gamble on switching to the intermediate tyres only for the move not to pay off. He eventually ended the race down in 18th and last place.

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Reflecting on his afternoon at Silverstone, the Chinese driver commented: “We started on the softs and the rain just came too late, so by then the tyre was kind of done after 10 laps. Then we tried a gamble for inters, obviously it didn’t really work out. At least we [gave] it a try, and after that I think the race was kind of over for myself.”

‘The rain just came too late’ – Zhou says tyre ‘gamble’ didn’t pay off

Like Bottas, Zhou was able to look at the good factors to come out of the weekend, with the team having made some progress with the C44.

“Definitely today is probably not the day we hoped for, but in general the car, the pace I think is back to where we expected, so [I’m] feeling more comfortable in all conditions,” the 25-year-old added as the team continue to search for their first point of the campaign.

“Let’s see, there’s still a lot of work in order to fight back in the points, but it’s going to be obviously a long journey of course to get there. But hopefully we can get it soon fixed and improve together.”