Saturday: There is hope at Sauber
Even though no Sauber driver managed to get into Q3, Adrian Sutil and Esteban Gutiérrez remain confident for the Australian Grand Prix tomorrow, Sunday. However, things will be complicated for the Mexican, who has been penalized for a gearbox change and will start at the back of the grid.
Adrian Sutil (#99) – 15th and 14th [13th on the grid]
For his first qualifying session in a Sauber, Adrian Sutil was hoping for a bit more than a 14th place on the grid: « We had a difficult weekend like many others. The car is not where we would like it to be, but I am satisfied that we were able to run without issues during qualifying and make it to Q2. The yellow flag at the end didn’t help, I think I could have gotten a bit more out of the car. »
But the German driver is still satisfied with his performance and will look to do better during the Grand Prix tomorrow: « But I think this 14th position is good today and I will clearly try to extract the maximum from the car tomorrow to improve this ranking. »
Esteban Gutiérrez – 21st and 19th [21st on the grid after penalty]
The Mexican was not more in form than his teammate, suffering from a problem that set him back compared to his rivals, putting him in traffic: « It was a nightmare in traffic. Obviously, we went out a little late in this session due to problems. I want to thank my mechanics because they did a fantastic job preparing the car for qualifying. »
« In the first lap, we were completely out of sync with the other cars and it wasn’t the best situation because I had to overtake four cars in this lap. In the second lap, I encountered traffic at the first corner and it wasn’t ideal. As for the race, we need to improve our reliability and that’s the key issue at the moment. So we are trying to focus on that. »
But Gutiérrez remains optimistic seeing Sutil’s performance: « The positive point is that Adrian’s car is in a good position today and this indicates that we can fight for something. »
