Villeneuve makes a brutal jab at Sauber: 'They're not even trying'

Jacques Villeneuve made a brutal jab at Sauber during a grid walk ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He sees the team just killing time, waiting for Audi to takeover. The Audi name will be on the grid for the 2026 Formula 1 season, when the new rules and regulations arrive in the sport.

Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu will start at the back of the grid for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. The 1997 Formula 1 World Champion sees this happening often. The funny thing is about Sauber is that they're at the back more or less every qualifying and more or less every race. But you look at the times, the grid is so close. It's only about a second, maybe a second and a half that they're off pole," Villeneuve said on Sky Sports.

"So it's obviously not a bad Formula One car, it's just compared to everybody else that it is. They would be happy in the 90s when the last cars were five seconds off the pace," he said. "But they're just surviving until Audi takes over. They don't seem to be putting much into the car. They're not even trying to be competitive. So there's not much to say there."

Sauber are the only team not to score points during the 2024 Formula 1 season. Bottas and Zhou have just eight Grands Prix, including Baku, and three sprint races to change that before the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi.

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