My sysadmin turned off root access, but gave me sudo rights to login as root.

To continue to login directly as root I copy pasted a connection profile, and then edited the property Connection / Logon Scripts / Logon script and pointed to the script sudo_root.vbs:

# $language = "VBScript"
# $interface = "1.0"

Sub Main
  crt.Screen.WaitForString "$"
  crt.Screen.Send "sudo su - root" & Chr(10)
End Sub