Hungarian GP Woes: Stake F1's Pace Falls Short

Stake F1’s Alunni Bravi candidly highlighted the team’s ongoing challenges after a disappointing Hungarian GP.

Stake F1 has yet to open its points tally in 2024. In a race at the Hungaroring where only one retirement occurred, the team could not capitalize on any situation to break into the top 10.

“The race at the Hungaroring was quite challenging for us: unfortunately, it confirmed that our race pace and consistency across different tire types are not sufficient to compete for points at this time,” laments Alunni Bravi.

“We knew this since Friday when race simulations showed that compared to our direct competitors, we had higher degradation and lacked pace,” continues the Italian, who nevertheless saw positives in Valtteri Bottas’s race.

“The race simply wasn’t as good as we had hoped, even though we tried to differentiate our drivers’ strategies, bringing Guanyu in earlier to potentially create gaps for Valtteri.”

“After the positive aspects we saw in qualifying due to the new updates, there is still performance to be found in the race and especially in dirty air. We saw Valtari make some overtaking maneuvers, on Ricciardo at the start of the race and on Sargeant and Ocon towards the end, when he eventually ended up chasing Magnussen. It didn’t change the final outcome for us, but we saw that we could compete with our rivals on track.”

Guanyu Zhou’s race, starting from 18th place, was not smooth sailing: “It was tough for Guanyu: we chose to bring him in earlier to cover Magnussen, Ocon, Alonso, and Ricciardo. We knew the second and third stints would be challenging for him, but in the end, the pace was not there for him either.”

“On a positive note, the four pit stops were consistent and fast: this reflects the hard work done by our teams, the mechanics here on the track and the engineering office in Hinwil, to solve the issues we encountered earlier in the season.”

“With this mindset, which shows that we can react and improve through everyone’s efforts in the team, we should look forward to the upcoming races. There is still much work to do, but this effort will bear fruit not only after the break but also in 2025.”