10.10.2024Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber: Promising start to the season

The start of the 2024 Formula 1 season was the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix, which was held for the 20th time from February 29th to March 2nd. The season-opening race took place on a Saturday for the first time since the South African Grand Prix in 1982. The background was the beginning of Ramadan on the Sunday after the second race in Jeddah, which is why the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix had to take place on a Saturday. In order to ensure the minimum break of one week between two Grand Prix, the season opener also took place on a Saturday. But it wasn't just the day of the week of the first race that was special. For the first time, all of the cars that started saw the checkered flag in the first race of a season.

The first qualifying was hotly contested. In the first part of the time trial, two tenths of a second separated the top 10 from elimination. In the end, both Valtteri Bottas in 16th place and Zhou Guanyu in 17th place narrowly missed the jump into the second qualifying part.

The two KICK Sauber drivers therefore started the first race of the season from the back of the field. For veteran Valtteri Bottas, the start of the season went anything but as hoped: "Unfortunately, today was simply not my day. I had a good start, but then got involved in the incident in the first corner, which caused damage to the front wing, which meant I lost some ground and power. We also had a problem with the wheel nut during my second pit stop, which meant we lost even more time. Luck was not on our side today, but hopefully that was all the bad luck this season. On the positive side, we were definitely faster than our main competitors, as you can see from Zhou, who almost scored points. That shows that we have a better racing car than last season and gives us confidence for the season." The Finn ended up in 19th place out of 20 classified vehicles. Things went much better for his teammate Zhou Guanyu, however. The first and so far only Chinese driver to ever take part in a Formula 1 Grand Prix had a good start to the season. With eleventh place he just missed out on the points, but his racing performance gave hope.

"Today we got everything we could out of it and I'm glad we were able to fight so closely for the points. We had a clean race with a good start in which I was able to gain a few positions. We made progress over the weekend and the team worked hard to find the optimal setup," sums up Zhou Guanyu. "Unfortunately we were unable to score any points in the race. There is still a lot for us to improve and we will continue to work on our performance in order to be able to fight even harder for points in the coming races."

The model cars for the season opener, made from resin, are available from the manufacturer Minichamps in a limited edition of 360 copies each in scale 1:43. The models were produced in the usual high quality and reflect the originals as best as possible.

Valtteri Bottas KICK Sauber C44 #77 Bahrain GP Formula 1 2024 1:43 Minichamps, RRP €79.95, item-no.: 417240177

Zhou Guanyu KICK Sauber C44 #24 Bahrain GP Formula 1 2024 1:43 Minichamps, RRP €79.95, item-no.: 417240124

Products

Zhou Guanyu KICK Sauber C44 #24 Bahrain GP Formula 1 2024 1:43 Minichamps

79,95 €