Mixed day for Sauber at Budapest
For the fifth time this season the team managed to get one car into the top ten qualifying. Pedro de la Rosa qualified ninth for tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. The Spaniard made it into Q3 for the second time.
For his team-mate, Kamui Kobayashi, almost everything went wrong in qualifying – tyre strategy, traffic and, on top of that, he didn’t see a red light in the pit lane, so missed going into the FIA garage to be weighed. He will drop five grid positions.
Pedro de la Rosa: C29.04 / Ferrari 056 Qualifying: 9th / 1.21.411 min (in Q3) 3rd Practice: 13th / 1:22.151 min (21 laps) “I am happy with my performance but, more importantly, I am very proud of the team. The car was really good. My position proves how much progress the guys from Hinwil have made with the car, especially to make it quicker in slow corners. They just kept their heads down and worked hard, and they have turned it around. Tomorrow I will try and stay out of trouble at the start and during the first lap, and then I will certainly fight for points.”
Kamui Kobayashi: C29.02 / Ferrari 056 Qualifying: 18th / 1.22.222 min (in Q1) / 3rd Practice: 14th / 1:22.337 min (20 laps) “I am very disappointed. We have done a lot of set-up changes since we arrived here, but still I am not happy. To me the car feels strange, different from what I’m used to, and I don’t have any grip. So the situation was quite difficult for me anyway, and then the team was over-optimistic sending me out on the harder tyres for my second run in Q1. I believe on the softer compound I would have managed to get at least to Q2. However, mistakes happen. I obviously went past a red light in the pit lane and missed going to the FIA scales. I just didn’t see it.“
Peter Sauber, Team Principal: “Being ninth was a good performance by Pedro. Congratulation also to the team as it was able to find a very good set-up on a track which we didn’t expect to suit our car. Kamui was blocked twice on his quick laps, which was very unfortunate for him.”
James Key, Technical Director: “At the end it was a mixed day for us. This morning neither driver was able to put their lap times together due to traffic. Looking at the various sector times we were quite confident in the car’s performance, as well as the drivers’. They both reported the car felt better than yesterday. Going into qualifying we did a longer run with the harder tyres on both cars, which looked okay. But on the second run, also on the prime tyres in order to save a set of option tyres, unfortunately Kamui caught some traffic on two of his laps in the final run, which spoilt the laps for him. Nevertheless, had we gone with the softer tyres, I believe he would still have gone through. That was our mistake, and we apologize to Kamui for that. Pedro put in a very good performance that got us through to Q3. It was very close in the end. Ninth is okay, and it is just a few tenths away from the times in front.”
