Significant update for Sauber at Spain
The Sauber F1 Team is looking forward to the Spanish Grand Prix with special excitement because it will bring a significant update for the Sauber C30-Ferrari to the Circuit de Catalunya. The circuit near Barcelona, where the fifth round of this year’s World Championship is to be held on 22nd May, is regarded as a track that will highlight a competitive car.
Kamui Kobayashi, who just managed to score the team’s eighth point of the season in Turkey, despite having started from last, is heading for a higher grid position and some more points in Spain. Rookie Sergio Pérez is hungry to achieve his first F1 point.
Kamui Kobayashi (car number 16):
“Every team and driver knows the circuit in Barcelona extremely well from winter testing. Our car seemed to be good there in February and March. For the next Grand Prix weekend it will be important to focus on the set-up of our car with the new parts, and we will have to make sure the update results in an improvement in qualifying and the race. The track offers an interesting combination of high speed, medium speed and low speed corners. The last sector, which is comparatively slow, could be challenging for us. In the past overtaking was particularly difficult on that circuit, but I believe the Drag Reduction System will help to make it an exciting Grand Prix. I feel very much at home using the adjustable rear wing. I’m happy with the system and I think it will be a real benefit for the Spanish Grand Prix’s audience.”
Sergio Pérez (car number 17):
“I’m looking forward to the weekend in Barcelona very much. I have been quite unlucky in the previous races and I really have the feeling the Spanish Grand Prix is when this will change. I strongly believe I will score points there. I am very motivated and I like the Barcelona circuit a lot. Also I always did well there. In Turkey we weren’t able to show our potential and I hope this changes in Spain and, to begin with, we are better in qualifying. We will bring an update for the car and I trust it will meet our expectations.”
James Key, Technical Director: “Barcelona is familiar to everyone. We tested there twice over the winter, but I’m sure in hotter conditions we have to re-evaluate how the tyres are working on the track. It’s another circuit which is quite hard on tyres, and turn three in particular is hard on the left hand side of the car. It’s going to be a case of looking at tyre degradation and durability on Friday, and trying to come to some conclusions. Barcelona is a relatively high speed track, so one which should be quite reasonable for our car. After the race performance in Istanbul that could be good for us, but we need to improve our qualifying performance.
“We’ll have a new, quite significant aero package on the car, which will be a completely new front wing, updates to the front and rear brake ducts, new bodywork, new devices around the floor leading edge and under the chassis, and we’ll be testing the new exhaust system again. We’ll also be continuing our work on the mechanical update we had in Istanbul, which proved to be positive. So it will be interesting to see how this works. If it works well it should give us a good few tenths of a second improvement in lap time. Our goal is to continue our good race form, to try to improve qualifying and finish as high in the points as possible.”
