The ‘monumental’ change that has propelled Sauber ahead of Mercedes and Red Bull

Sauber’s impressive Spanish Grand Prix was underlined by the team’s pit crew putting in the fastest performance of the weekend.

Gabriel Bortoleto’s swap to fresh medium tyres on Lap 19 of the Spanish Grand Prix was the fastest turnaround of the entire field during the weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Sauber set the fastest pitstop of the Spanish GP

Bortoleto’s stop to change his tyres was done in just 2.13 seconds, with Sauber thus taking the fastest pit stop time for the second time this season after doing the same at the Miami Grand Prix.

The stop was just 0.02 seconds quicker than what Alpine managed with Pierre Gasly, but emphasises the clear progress the Swiss team has made in this critical area of operations since last year.

According to the pitstop data presented by DHL analysing pit stop performances, which utilises the same F1 points-scoring system to evaluate how teams are faring, Sauber has scored 109 points this season after the first nine races. In 2024, the team scored a total of 144, finishing as the seventh-best team over the season’s average.

This year, their two rapid performances in Miami and Spain have helped elevate Sauber to the third-quickest team, on average.

It’s Ferrari who leads the way outright with more than double the points of overall championship leaders McLaren, with the Scuderia consistently setting impressively fast pitstop times.

But, of the four top teams, Mercedes and Red Bull trail Sauber, which has managed to interject right in between the Ferrari/McLaren and Mercedes/Red Bull duos.

This is down to what one senior team source told PlanetF1.com has been a “monumental” effort back at the team’s Hinwil headquarters, along with the trackside crew, to make this an area of priority after Sauber suffered consistently slow stops at the start of 2024.

These were caused by hardware issues that caused the wheel nuts to regularly become cross-threaded, leading to nightmarishly long stops as a consequence before the team managed to introduce changes to reduce the problems.

The clear progress has been made under former sporting director Beat Zehnder through last season, leading to the team setting the fastest stop time at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, while Inaki Rueda has taken up the mantle of responsibility for this area this season.

Jonathan Wheatley: Sauber full of ‘passion and hard work’

The speed of Sauber’s marked improvement in this area has also coincided with the arrival of Jonathan Wheatley as team boss. During his time at Red Bull as sporting director, the Milton Keynes-based squad was consistently the fastest team in the pitlane, with operational sharpness in this area being a key focus of Wheatley.

The achievement came on the same weekend Nico Hulkenberg scored Sauber’s best result, fifth place, coinciding with the introduction of a major upgrade package to the C45.

“I was just pleased that the upgrade did what we expected it to do, and the feedback from the drivers was consistent,” Sauber team boss Jonathan Wheatley told media, including PlanetF1.com, after the chequered flag.

“We had a racing car under us today, you know? It’s the first time that I felt that since I’ve been here, and it’s a great feeling. I’m trying to stay in the moment a little bit before pressing on to the next race!

“There’s so much hard work going on and so much passion in this team and, for me, I’m hoping that we can use this as one of the springboards on this roadmap we’ve got towards where we want to be. I’m hoping we can build on the momentum from this.

“It just feels like this huge relief, because we know what we’ve been capable of. We haven’t had much luck, a few things here and there, and this wouldn’t be the first point since Melbourne, you know? The energy in the team is great. This only adds to it.”

The team introduced changes to its floor design and engine cover, as well as making tweaks to its front wing endplate to coincide with the revised static load tests introduced in Spain.

Asked by PlanetF1.com about the extent of Sauber’s laptime gain with the upgrades, or whether the progress has been masked by the stiffer front wings, Wheatley said, “I think we need to really go away and look at the long runs to get a true feeling for it.

“But I said we needed a tenth at least to get into the fight. That’s what we’re talking about. In the old days, you put an upgrade on, you were hoping for half a second, six-tenths of a second. But everything is so close.

“How many times have we missed out on Q2 by a hundredth of a second? So any performance you put on the car is going to make a difference, and honestly, the best strategy is to have the fastest car.”

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