2024 Sauber C44

It's not the kind of Formula One car you've ever seen before. Aggressive, exciting, different – both on track and off it: the Stake F1 Team C44 is finally in the open and it's already got the world of motorsport talking.

The 2024 challenger of Stake F1 Team was unveiled in the historic setting of London's Guildhall, but there was nothing conventional or staid about it. There was an edginess to the event, the feeling of being at the start of a new era, to be witnessing the birth of a new way of doing racing: but, despite the stars in attendance and the glitz of the set-up, all eyes were on the new car. As Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, our 2024 race drivers, looked on, the team lifted the covers off an impressive piece of engineering, the latest work of art to come out of Hinwil.

Clad in an attractive black and Fluo Racing Green livery – the shiny, viridescent hue itself the result of impressive development work by team partners, BASF – the look and feel of the C44 redefines what to expect on track. It's an eye-catcher, a head-turner, the centre of attention on every TV screen, the point of focus in every photograph. It's not the usual F1 car: it's not a tribute to the past, but a nod to a new and exciting future, one that incorporates everything that is great about our sport, and elevates it to the next level.

The C44 is the result of the indefatigable work of hundreds of people back in Hinwil, who for months on end designed, developed, produced and finally assembled the new car with a growing sense of excitement. It's the product of the determination of a technical team, led by Technical Director, James Key, to make a decisive step forward in the pecking order, to go back fighting where the team aims to fight.

The C44 is a marked departure from its predecessor, the C43: a slew of changes has been introduced – some very visible, some more subtle – to bring performance to the package and open up new areas of development. The most visible, and perhaps most consequential, is the shift to a new pull-rod front suspension, compared to the push-rod system sported on the C43: the shift is testament to the solid work produced by the team in Hinwil, which committed vast resources to it, and is driven mostly by the desire to unlock the aerodynamics benefits of the pull-rod arrangement.

The C44 sports also an aggressively redesigned aero package, with marked development evident in the sidepods and engine cover, which are taking existing concepts to new extremes and display the team's ability to package the car in reduced spaces, a change that also required the redesign of many of the car's internals; and a completely new floor, a key area to generating downforce. And, with the new development avenues opened by the choices made in the creation of the C44, the design team is already busy finalising some important updates that will be brought to track in the opening rounds of the championship, as the team intends to be a strong player in the development race.

As always, the proof is in the pudding: the C44 will get its first test of track action on Friday, during a shakedown in Barcelona, before travelling to Bahrain for the three days of testing that mark the official start of the season. Only then, and in the following week's Grand Prix, we will know just how good the C44 is: for now, we know it already tops the standings for the most daring, aggressive and disruptive car out there.

Source - Sauber