F1 | Key: “C44? We could have dared more, but I wasn't there”

James Key arrived in Hinwil a few months ago as one of the stones that form the foundations of the team that in a couple of years will race in Formula 1 under the name of Audi. Meanwhile, the Sauber team, which has become Stake F1 Team, is in the midst of the transition period which has the task of uniting the threads between the Alfa Romeo era and that of the Ingolstadt company.

The C44 showed up at the Sakhir tests with an eccentric look: carbon black and touches of fluorescent green to break up the continuity given by the Alfa liveries. The livery was the only thing about Sauber that caught the eye, with Valtteri Bottas and GuanYu Zhou busy doing correlation tests, aerodynamic tests, race pace.

The only jolt came thanks to the Chinese, on the last day of testing, when he tried C4 compounds at the best time on the track. The final third period, however, leaves the time he finds. A flash in the darkness. Yet Key said the C44's true potential remains to be seen.

“It actually went well in testing. Yes, we were very conservative and not very careful about what we did, like everyone else, to be brutally honest. If we wanted to, we could go much faster. But I think our priority is was to characterize the car based on what we thought we should see, which in principle we did from a mechanical and aerodynamic point of view, and then investigate many things, in particular the aspects of race performance, and the various options, which are a whole plethora of things, mechanical setups, drivers, tire management and so on.”

“We have therefore dedicated a lot of our time to the arduous task of working through a phased approach. So far, however, we have ticked a lot of boxes, and I am very happy with the car: one of Valtteri's first comments was that it does what it does on the simulator That means, basically, what we thought was going to happen is more or less that, and it was a matter of working on that and correlating and ticking the boxes.”

“So, actually, it's been pretty good for us. It's impossible to say where everyone is. I saw the top 10 on TV today, and it basically took over last year's position in the championship. So I think we'll basically know more next week. But I just think it's pretty tight again, I don't think it's necessarily spread out, maybe Red Bull stole a bit of ground, but where does everyone sit now…”.

Key is not the real father of this single-seater. When he arrived in Hinwil all the main concepts had already been decided and set up, so he couldn't do much to put his own spin on it. He wanted to underline this when, a few moments before, he declared that the team could have dared more on the single-seater.

“I think there are some aspects of the car on which we should have dared a little more. I arrived in the team a little too late to do this type of work. But the positive aspect of this car, and I noticed it since my arrival at Sauber, is that the things tested in the simulator, the things that come out of a sort of logical process of investigation into a particular mechanical aspect, seem to be very well correlated. The C44 is a very pure single-seater, which produces the results you expect. The front suspension works as expected.”

Speaking of the suspension, Key explained the choice made by Sauber to adopt the pull-rod system at the front (at the rear, however, there is the push-rod). The British engineer was quite clear: it's all a question of taking advantage from an aerodynamic point of view, even to the detriment of other factors such as mechanical and load transfer.

“For the team, the pull-rod suspension at the front is new. From a mechanical point of view it is a compromise. All the springs and shock absorbers work in reverse. Everything is upside down and it is not an easy arrangement to manage. The single-seater it gets heavier. The push-rod suspension has an efficient way of transferring load, while the pull-rod makes everything more complex. So when you choose the pull-rod you do it because, on balance, it is better in terms of performance. It's all a question of aerodynamics. All the front suspensions are, but the pull-rod is better precisely from that point of view, but worse in all other ways”.