No improvement for Sauber on Turkish Saturday
The qualifying for the Turkish Grand Prix turned out to be a disappointment for the Sauber F1 Team. Kamui Kobayashi retired in the early minutes of the session due to a fuel system problem and Sergio Pérez didn’t manage to get the most out of the softer tyre compound. Kobayashi will have to start last for tomorrow’s race, Pérez qualified 15th.
Sergio Pérez:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 03 / Ferrari 056)
Qualifying: 15th/1:27.244 min (in Q2) / 3rd practice: 11th/1:27.121 min (20 laps)
„Of course I’m disappointed about today’s qualifying result. In Q1 my lap time with the harder tyre compound was okay, but then in Q2 the run on the softer compound was not good. Generally we did some changes after Friday’s practice sessions. It was quite difficult to do the set-up because of the changing weather conditions. Some changes were in the right direction and others were not. However, my car was ok in qualifying. It will not be an easy race for us but I still hope to manage to score a point tomorrow.”
Kamui Kobayashi:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 04 / Ferrari 056)
Qualifying: 24th/no lap time / 3rd practice: 18th/1:27.976 min (19 laps)
„I went out to do a first run right when Q1 started because I wanted to check another set up option. But then on the middle of the back straight the engine suddenly stopped. It was a problem with the fuel system. I hoped to make it back into the garage but I stopped before the pit lane entrance. Anyway, for me the session would have been over even if I had make it into the garage because it takes a lot of time to change the fuel system. I have to accept that it was bad luck for me and I want to do a good race tomorrow. Although I like overtaking a lot, I must admit there are an awful lot of cars between me and the first point.“
Peter Sauber, Team Principal: “A problem in the fuel system hindered Kamui from setting a lap time in Q1. That was it for him. The result of Sergio was disappointing for me. Based on his competitive lap time in the first part of qualifying on the hard compound we expected him to make it into Q3, however, for some reason he was not able to extract the maximum from the soft tyres. We calculated a diffrerence of app. one second, but this was finally not the case.”
James Key, Technical Director: “In the morning we carried on with the work from yesterday with some set-up changes to the cars and working still on some mechanical parts. Sergio was quite happy. We had a little bit of work to do with bouncing the car. Sergio didn’t quite get the most out of his run on the soft tyres in the morning. Kamui wasn’t particularly happy. It seemed that the consistency of the car was a bit tricky for him. Missing the soft tyre rund yesterday didn’t quite help. For qualifying we changed Kamui’s set to where he was the night before. We sent him out early to check the car, but then he had a sudden drop in fuel pressure. It looks to be fuel problem on the high pressure side which we need to investigate because it’s something we haven’t seen before. That was a shame for Kamui. That presents him with a big challenge for tomorrow, but he’s a fighter and he as a lot of new tyres. There are still opportunities int the race. Sergio’s Q1 lap was on prime tyres and was pretty competitive. In Q2 he used two sets of option tyres but he didn’t find the benefit that we needed to go through to Q3. We just found half a second of the one second plus we expected. This we need to understand. Overall a disappointing qualifying, and we need to work hard to head towards the top then as best we can.”
