Although it doesn't morph into Audi until 2026, Alessandro Alunni Bravi believes Sauber can be a player in the 2025 driver market.

Though attention is focussed on the potential vacancy at Red Bull and the known vacancy at Mercedes a number of other drivers are out of contract at season end.

Being a 'back of the midfield' team, Sauber (Stake) is only really being mentioned in terms of the driver market because in 2026 it becomes Audi, and while many believe Carlos Sainz will be heading there the big question is what are the Swiss outfit's plans for 2025?

Alessandro Alunni Bravi believes the team can be a key player in the driver market this year.

"There are fourteen drivers without, let's say, a contract fixed for next year," he told reporters in Shanghai. "So, as all the teams, we are speaking with different drivers.

"You know, it's not the time for us to take any decision," he added. "It's time to, you know, provide our drivers with a performing car.

"But let me say that we are happy that it seems that we can play a role, a different role in the drivers' market for the future thanks to Audi's announcement and all the investment that will be done in order to improve our team.

"So I think that is good news for our team. Finally we are attractive and we are not spectators, we are a player in the market."

Indeed, other than Sainz, veteran Nico Hulkenberg is being linked with Audi for 2026, possibly 2025, with talk of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou both at risk of being left without a berth.

Asked about the constant speculation, he said: "Every driver, I think, is speaking with a lot of teams to understand the situation, to understand if there could be a common vision on the project, especially for a team like us that is in a full transformation process ahead of 2026.

"But we are focused on our drivers and we respect our drivers. We know that we need to deliver better performance as a team. And this is the first step to start deciding what will be the driver line-up for the future.

"First, we need to consolidate our performance. So far, we didn't score points. So I think that the main target, and the priority for the team, is to start scoring points and then to approach the drivers' market, starting with discussion with our drivers and then having, of course, open eyes on the market.

"I fully agree that it's not appropriate to discuss or to disclose what could be the discussion in place. No one really knows what other teams are offering to the drivers, are discussing with the drivers. And sometimes we don't want to be part of a game that is done by others. So let's focus on this race. And I think that the car performance now is our priority and there will be time to take the right decision for the future.

However, looking to the immediate future, the Swiss outfit's issues revolve around pit stops rather than the 2025/2026 driver market.

"We know the issues that we had," he said. "We know that we are working hard back in Hinwil to fix these issues, that all the measures will be ready, you know, not for this race.

"I don't want to give a timeline just because, you know, we are working hard and we try to anticipate and reduce this lead time. We have other mitigation measures here that should allow us to be more consistent. And then of course the target is also to reduce the pit stop time.

"But I think that the main target is to not have any problem," he added. "At the last race, unfortunately, we know we lost the possibility to score points in the second pit stop with Valtteri, because we came in ahead of Tsunoda and we rejoined the track after four drivers, so we know that there is an issue. We are working on it. This doesn't of course affect our determination to fight for points here."

Asked about the specifics of the pit stop issues, he said: "It's a hardware problem. We need to redesign certain parts and of course, when you need to redesign, it takes time, also, for the manufacturing process, especially in certain areas.

"In this case, we immediately take the problem, the issues that we disclosed, that we found in Bahrain, we start redesigning the parts, and now we are in the manufacturing process, and there is some lead time for those parts that are not just depending from our production department in-house.

"We are trying to reduce this lead time. And of course, Imola is the target, but we try to do our best if we can have something before that, but we want to have something that fixes the problem without any doubt. But for the moment, we can apply some mitigation measures that in our opinion can reduce the risk of a failure in the pit stop. Of course, we need to be consistent, but the target is not to be the quickest. The target is to have a clean pit stop."

Check out our Friday gallery from Shanghai here.