Sauber fail to get updated car working
The Spanish Grand Prix produced a difficult ending for the Sauber F1 Team’s drivers. Esteban Gutiérrez finished the race in P16, while Adrian Suitl was 17th. The new package was not yet working well in all areas.
However, the team is adamant it was able to reduce the gap in relation to the lap time to the competition. During the Barcelona test on Tuesday and Wednesday the team will work on optimising the package.
Esteban Gutiérrez, #21, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 03/Ferrari): “Obviously, we cannot be happy with this result. It is not where we want to be. It was a good start, and I managed to gain some positions. After that I just kept dropping back. During the race it was very challenging to keep the tyres alive and to have good speed on the straights. I was trying to defend my position. Nevertheless, we should not lose our motivation. We have the test this week and we need to have the right programme to get things sorted out.”
Adrian Sutil, #99, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 02/Ferrari): "The race was not very exciting for me. Unfortunately, the performance of my car was not good and I was struggeling with the grip. Both stints with the medium tyres were difficult, I think the hard tyres worked better. At the end we were running out of laps. It was a disappointing race for me. We still have a huge problem with the grip level, especially while turning into the corners. We still have to work on this. Now we have to look forward and do better during the upcoming races.”
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “This result is obviously not satisfactory. We came to Barcelona with a development package, and we can see that the gap to our direct competitors is smaller than before. Now it’s about further optimising this package. There are still a number of points which are not as good as they could be. On top of that, we have to get a more profound understanding of how to best use the tyres.“
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “For sure, this result is not great. Nevertheless, the gap to some of our direct competitors’ lap times was about half a second, while in the past it was over a second, and this is motivating. So from a performance point of view we were closer, but not close enough. Initially we planned a two stop strategy with both cars, but then we switched to three for Esteban. The car’s balance was not as good as it should be, but I guess we know what we have to do, and we will have the chance to work on this during the test on Tuesday and Wednesday. We have a number of new parts which should allow us to get more out of the package.”
