Friday: Sutil satisfied and Gutiérrez not confident at Sauber

Adrian Sutil (No. 99) – 15th and 13th

With a lighter Sauber equipped with numerous new features, Adrian Sutil expressed satisfaction with the behavior of his C33 on the Barcelona circuit: “We have clearly made a step forward. This morning, it wasn’t easy to evaluate things because we needed to resolve a few minor issues. However, I had good feelings about the car’s potential, and this afternoon, we were able to see it.”

The German driver even allows himself to dream of a spot in Q3 tomorrow during the qualifiers: If we can put everything in place tomorrow, we will certainly have a chance to finish the qualifiers in the top 10. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are heading in the right direction.

Esteban Gutiérrez (n°21) – 15th [FP2]

The Mexican had a harder time than his teammate and will still have a lot of work to do tomorrow to improve his Sauber and adapt it to his driving style: « In the end, it took me time to adapt to the track conditions and the new package. At the moment, I am not very confident. I am not really satisfied with the car’s balance. We had some difficulties with the power unit, so we lost a lot of track time, which makes it even more difficult to get a good feel for the car. »

Giedo van der Garde (No. 36) – 18th [FP1]

The Dutchman also struggled with a practice session filled with numerous issues, particularly with the brakes: « It wasn’t a good session for me, as I encountered many problems. We had some reliability issues with the car. We had problems with braking when downshifting, which caused a lot of oversteer. »