Valtteri Bottas spoke at a press conference about Mattia Binotto’s arrival at Sauber, which will become Audi in 2026: “This will be the third change in three years, it will take time.”
These are busy days at Stake Sauber: the new technical direction has been officially announced, the third in three years, with Mattia Binotto returning to Formula 1 with the Swiss team, set to transform into Audi in just under a year and a half.

Bottas commented on Binotto’s arrival at Sauber: “The announcement of Mattia Binotto was quite sudden, I think everything happened rather quickly. But at those high managerial levels, we don’t really know what’s going on, so we drivers and many other team members are out of these decisions. It was certainly an unexpected decision, but at the same time, I want to both welcome Mattia to the team and thank Seidl and Hoffmann for their contributions to Sauber.”
“What will change? It’s a kind of reset; it’s no secret that when leadership changes, it takes a while to adjust. Mattia needs to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and it will take time. But in some ways, it’s the third time in three years this has happened: I believe it’s more a decision that will change the future of the team, and only the coming years will give us the answers.”
Then he commented on future development: “I don’t want to go into too much detail about the car, these are internal matters. Compared to the top teams, we lack human resources, but we have been growing recently. There are areas of the factory we need to focus on, but also on the car, because we are not close to the performance we want.”

Bottas: “At Spa, I Believe We Will Be Close, But I Don’t Want…”
Finally, the Finn also talked about the current season, which is certainly not easy for the Sauber team: “Even though Spa is a long lap in terms of lap time, I believe we will be close in performance to the cars ahead of us. We made a step forward in Budapest, but here the track is completely different: I don’t want to make predictions, I just hope we will be in the fight”, he ended.
Foto: Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber