Sutil finishes 13th in anonymous race for Sauber
Disappointing Canadian Grand Prix for the Sauber F1 Team. Adrian Sutil drove a race without any special issues and finished in 13th place, while Esteban Gutiérrez stopped shortly before the end of the race due to a problem with the energy storage system. He was classified 14th.
Esteban Gutiérrez, car #21, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 01/Ferrari): “It was a very challenging race! Especially in the beginning, I was struggling so much with the tires. It was hard to manage them and to drive consistently. I fought with some cars, but it was extremely difficult to keep them behind. When I pitted, I got a fresh set of soft tires, which I drove until the end. With this second set of soft tires, the car felt much better, I even enjoyed driving. But then we lost power, and I had to retire.”
Adrian Sutil, car #99, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 04/Ferrari): “It was a long race with many incidents. We were able to keep out of all the trouble from start to finish. Hence, it was a good team performance, which I am very pleased of. I am also satisfied with my own performance. However, all this only led to a 13th position, which we have to accept at this point in time. At least we gave everything today.”
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “No doubt, this was a difficult race. The team worked well delivering good pit stops, and we were able to execute the strategy as planned. The tyre wear was as expected, so there was nothing wrong on this side. However, we have to analyse the data very carefully to understand why the lap times were slower than we could expect based on the long runs on Friday. We will concentrate on working on the set-up of the car, because there is more potential to be exploited.”
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “Adrian made a good start and gained two positions. We were planning a two stop strategy for him, and we sticked to it. The race went more or less okay. We did not quite achieve the lap times we expected. With Esteban, who had start from pits, we did this trick with the safety car. He started on the soft tyre, but then we switched to the super soft and then immediately back to the soft. He struggled on the first set of soft tyres mainly due to graining, but was then able to extract more from the second set. Shortly before the end there was a problem with the energy storage system, and we decided to bring him in.“
