Bottas Thrives at Stake F1 Zhou's Strategy Fails

Zhou’s Misstep Alerts McLaren, Bottas Outsmarts

08/07/2024

At Stake F1, while Bottas excelled with sharp strategies, Zhou’s early choice of soft tyres raised eyebrows.

Stake F1 failed to capitalise on the changing race conditions at Silverstone to reverse their fortunes.

Valtteri Bottas finished in 15th place, a lap behind Lewis Hamilton… Could he have aimed for points with a better strategy?

“It wasn’t an easy day; we were driving on dry patches with slicks at times. But we made the right strategic choices today, with no unnecessary pit stops. However, initially on the dry, we didn’t have the pace to challenge the cars ahead.”

“That’s why we need to continue working, to get new parts on the car, and sooner rather than later! They should be arriving for Budapest, hopefully. That’s what we need.”

Guanyu Zhou, on the other hand, finished two laps behind Lewis Hamilton: unlike his teammate, his risks did not pay off… He notably switched to intermediates too early.

“We started on the softs, and the tyres were dead after 10 laps. The rain came too late for us… We then tried a gamble with the intermediates, and it didn’t work out. But after that, the race was pretty much over for me.”

Zhou’s comment is telling: his softs were dead after 10 laps. If Lando Norris’s strategists had perhaps studied this stint more closely, shouldn’t they have opted for medium tyres towards the end of the race rather than softs (even considering a heavy fuel load, the lifespan of the softs wasn’t promising at Stake…)?

Zhou concludes on his performance: “We weren’t much helped today… Generally, the pace, the car, were where we expected. We felt a bit more comfortable in these conditions. There’s still a lot of work to do to get back into the points, it’s a long road ahead. But I hope we can sort out our issues to get there.”

Bottas Thrives at Stake F1 Zhou's Strategy Fails

Bottas Thrives at Stake F1 Zhou’s Strategy Fails Bottas Thrives at Stake F1 Zhou’s Strategy Fails

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