Sauber has positive day despite hydraulic leak
For the Sauber F1 Team and Kamui Kobayashi today’s focus was on working with the car under race conditions and also comparing aero components in the afternoon. Despite interruptions due to red flags in the morning and an hydraulic leak in the late afternoon, it was still a positive day of testing with the Sauber C31-Ferrari.
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “With regard to our lap times, we are quite happy with today’s achievements. In terms of running through our programme, we have been a bit unlucky. For us today the red flags always came out at the wrong time. But this is how it goes, and we have also had days when interruptions didn’t do us any harm. However, today it was difficult to find a good rhythm, and then later on we lost more than an hour due to an hydraulic leak. The fact that we had to remove the gear box to fix it was very time consuming. Overall we gained some good experience with the car, and there is still more to be learnt about it.”
Kamui Kobayashi: “I am pretty happy with the car and its handling under race conditions. We wanted to improve compared to the last test, and we clearly did that. Obviously we couldn’t do everything we had on our programme, but I think we can compensate for that. We still have two days of testing left and I’m very much looking forward to being in the car again on Sunday. Of course it is too early to know where we are compared to the others, but the feeling is good.”
Weather: Foggy in the morning, then sunny, air 8-21°C, track 9-30°C
Chassis / engine: C31.02 / Ferrari 056
Mileage today: 77 laps
Fastest lap: 1:23,836 min (in the afternoon, soft tyres)
