P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Bottas: Permanent fix for Sauber F1 pitstop woes "by Imola"
Sauber upgraded its pitstop equipment for this season, but they faced cross-threading issues on the wheel nuts starting from the Bahrain race, leading to problematic pitstops initially. Modifications and procedural changes were made to address the hardware problems, which somewhat improved pitstop efficiency, although they remain slower compared to rival teams in the midfield. The team’s struggles have been costly in the fiercely competitive midfield battle, resulting in drivers Bottas and Zhou Guanyu yet to score any points, while others have succeeded. Bottas mentioned additional modifications are planned for the Chinese Grand Prix, aiming for further improvements, even though a complete fix is not yet achieved. The team hopes to resolve the pitstop issues by the Imola race, acknowledging that these problems have masked their true performance potential in recent races.
