Sauber leave Budapest empty-handed
After a very good qualifying performance the Sauber F1 Team has been left empty handed at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Kamui Kobayashi had a great start from 13th, improved to tenth and later even ran in 7th position, but then lost four places when his tyres didn’t survive a very long stint. He finished 11th.
Sergio Pérez had been tenth on the grid but struggled at the beginning and lost ten places. After having recovered a little from there, he was penalized for overtaking under yellow. In the end he came in 15th.
Kamui Kobayashi: 11th
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 01 / Ferrari 056)
Tyres: start on intermediates, after 12 laps soft tyres, after 34 laps super soft, after 63 laps super soft.
“Having not scored any points today is of course disappointing. My start was good and the pace at the beginning was good too. The car’s performance in the wet was fine and after we had changed onto dry tyres the pace was reasonable. For a long time it looked as if I could get points today, but then it went wrong. When the second lot of rain came the team briefly thought about calling me to the pits to pick up intermediate tyres but I didn’t want to because I found the track was improving. This is how I improved to seventh place, but then we waited too long for the next tyre change. I couldn’t defend my position on that set of supersoft anymore and finally, after the unavoidable third pit stop, dropped just out of the points.“
Sergio Pérez: 15th
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 02 / Ferrari 056)
Tyres: start on intermediates, after 12 laps change to super soft, after 24 laps super soft, after 44 laps soft.
“I am deeply disappointed. After qualifying, which was good, I expected a lot more from the race. It had already started to go wrong on lap one. I had no grip at all and hardly managed to keep the car on track. I went wide at one corner and lost a lot of positions. I actually dropped back from 10th on the grid to 20th. At that time I was slower than the slowest cars and I hope we find the reason why this was so extreme. The drive through penalty just made matters worse later. I overtook Heikki Kovalainen because he was braking very late and there were yellow flags.”
Peter Sauber, Team Principal: “The highlight for our team this weekend was Sergio’s 10th place in qualifying. That is what I will take with me into the summer break.”
James Key, Technical Director: “This was obviously a disappointing end to the race. At the beginning the conditions were pretty uncertain. Kamui made a good start. We put him on the soft tyres on his first stop, but unfortunately they didn’t last as long as we were hoping, and on the second stop he got in some traffic. He also lost a place due to a problem on his pit stop. Sadly in the end we had to make another pit stop because we were unable to hold off the people behind us. Sergio lost ten places at the start and soon after, and wasn’t able to recover from that.”
