Hulkenberg takes strong 6th place at USA
The Sauber F1 Team was able to score further points at the United States Grand Prix in Austin. Nico Hülkenberg finished in a very good sixth position. Esteban Gutiérrez was forced to start from 20th due to a grid penalty and finished 14th.
He pitted on lap one while the safety car was deployed. Gutiérrez then drove a strong race, but starting from 20th turned out to remain a big challenge to overcome. He finished in 14th. After this strong performance, the team moves on to Brazil for the final race of the season.
Nico Hülkenberg, 6th, Sauber C32-Ferrari (Chassis 03/Ferrari 056): “A very solid result yet again. If I’m not mistaken, since Monza that would have been the eighth points finish in a row if it wasn’t for the brake disc failure in India and the drive through in Abu Dhabi. That’s a pretty impressive statistic. It was an interesting race. I didn’t have to fight that much, only at the end with Fernando (Alonso), which was good fun. Unfortunately in the crucial part of the race, about ten to 15 laps before the end, we didn’t quite have the pace of Fernando, so he was able to overtake me. During the last lap going into turn one I passed him, but then I just missed the apex and he was able to get me back at the exit. But we finished just a couple of seconds behind our competitors. I think it’s been a good weekend with a gain of a good eight points.”
Esteban Gutiérrez, 14th, Sauber C32-Ferrari (Chassis 01/Ferrari 056): “It was a very tough race starting from P20. We had to make up a lot of positions on track. I managed a good first lap. I made up a couple of positions and then, once the safety car was deployed, we decided to pit in order to put me on a different strategy to the other cars. We need to analyse the situation now and see how much we gained from that. I think all in all the problem came from the ten place grid penalty, which made it complicated at the end.”
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “We are very happy with this solid result for the team. We didn’t have any problems with the cars throughout the race and the team put in a good performance. Again, Nico drove a good race and we will look to see if we could have done anything different, so we might have been able to improve and gain one more position. With Esteban we opted for an unusual strategy, because of the difficulty due to his starting position, hoping he would be able to overtake a couple of cars at the end of the race. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out. Nevertheless, we can be happy with his performance.”
Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: “Scoring points was our aim today after qualifying well. Nico had a strong pace throughout the race and was fighting right until the last lap with Fernando Alonso. Sixth is a very good result for us. Due to Esteban’s grid position, we opted for a different strategy to allow him to attack at the end of the race. He did some good overtaking manoeuvres and drove well today, but it was always going to be difficult to fight for points starting from 20th. To be so close to fourth at the end of the race gives us more confidence that Brazil should be another good weekend for our team.”
