Sauber busy as team end testing with 177 laps
Following the problems on Saturday, Sauber drivers Adrian Sutil and Esteban Gutiérrez split duties and jointly completed a massive 177 laps in a single day, recording the highest daily mileage during this season's winter testing of any team.
Adrian Sutil was behind the wheel of the Sauber C33-Ferrari in the morning and completed 91 laps. Esteban Gutiérrez took over in the afternoon and completed another 86 laps.
This marks the end of pre-season testing. The Sauber F1 Team was able to get through a tough testing programme in Jerez and Bahrain reasonably well. Despite encountering unexpected issues, which resulted in less time on track, the team learned a lot. Now the team will take what it has learned and the data collected in order to be ready for the first race weekend in Melbourne, Australia, in two weeks.
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “Today we had both drivers in the car and managed to get through a busy programme. It was good for them to have this valuable time in the car. Looking back at the first test in Jerez, we had a tough programme to get through and faced several unexpected problems, which meant we lost running time. The learning curve was very steep at the first test. Now it’s a bit flatter, but there is still enough to do. We will take our experience from the tests, evaluate the data and be ready for the first race in Melbourne. Nevertheless, I’m sure that we will still learn a lot over the first few races of the season.”
Adrian Sutil, C33-01 / Ferrari: “It was a good morning. We covered everything that we had planned, just in a shorter time frame. Yesterday was unlucky, but it’s better to have a problem here than in Melbourne. I feel much more comfortable after this morning's session. Now we have a lot more data to analyse. Overall we had a tough testing programme to go through and we had unexpected problems here and there. However, we don’t get any more tests, so we will take what we have and get the most out of it in Melbourne, and I’m looking forward to that.”
Esteban Gutiérrez, C33-01 / Ferrari: “Today was really productive. We recovered a lot from what we lost yesterday and the team did a great job. We did a lot of laps and completed the whole programme. It’s satisfying to achieve this. Of course we still have quite a few things that we need to work on and sort out before Melbourne. However, I believe that we are going in the right direction. We were able to do a few race simulations, which I found useful. I was able to prepare for the first race and I feel ready for Melbourne.”
