Sauber utterly disappointed with lost chance of points
At the US Grand Prix in Austin the Sauber F1 Team was not able to convert the good grid position into a good result. Starting from P9, Adrian Sutil was taken out of the race through no mistake of his own by another competitor on lap one. Esteban Gutiérrez, who started in 15th, finished the race in P14.
Esteban Gutiérrez, car #21, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 01/Ferrari): “It was challenging to get the tyres to work after the safety car period. We lost quite a lot of time on this run. It is tricky when you have to push every lap of the race. Not being able to manage the tyres as other drivers do put us in a critical situation. I did my best and fought through the whole race. From now on we have to keep our focus on Brazil and Abu Dhabi, where I believe we will get the chance to score points.”
Adrian Sutil, car #99, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 02/Ferrari): “Unfortunately, it was a short race. I had a good start and was in a promising position. Sadly Sergio (Perez) crashed into my car, which was completely needless. It is very disappointing that we missed our biggest chance of points because of this move.”
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “After the promising qualifying this result is a huge disappointment especially for Adrian, who was forced out of the race through no fault of his own because of another driver. Looking at what happened at the end of the race, the question is what would have been possible today. Esteban, especially during the early race phase, lost a lot of time. We now have to analyse why that was the case.”
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “In the end a number of things went wrong today. Adrian made a good start defending ninth position. It was a good way to get into the race, but then he was taken out by another driver, which was a pity. So we had to concentrate on the other car. Being quite far back, we decided to change the strategy, and when the safety car came out at the end of lap one we brought him into the pits and put him on the medium compound tyres, in order to have longer stints in the beginning and a better pace in the end. But, particularly in the first stint, the lap times were not as expected. Overall we were limited by the race pace.”
