Power unit issue hampers Sutil
In qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix the Sauber F1 Team’s drivers were 14th (Esteban Gutiérrez) and 17th (Adrian Sutil). The Mexican was able to run in qualifying without any issues, but the German was missing quite a lot of top speed on the straights as shown by the data.
Esteban Gutiérrez, car #21, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 01/Ferrari), 14th: “I am pleased with the outcome of today. In qualifying we were able to extract more than we expected. We made the best out of what we currently have. Tomorrow it will not be an easy race, but at the same time we will keep fighting to extract the maximum out of the car. We will keep working hard and focusing on the race.”
Adrian Sutil, car #99, Sauber C33-Ferrari (Chassis 03/Ferrari), 17th: “It is a pity that qualifying was not as good as we expected. But on the other hand, we have had issues with the power unit and the energy management since yesterday. Because of this, we were not able to extract full power during qualifying, which cost me a lot of time on the straights. More than Q1 was unfortunately not possible under these circumstances. We have to get together and find a solution for the race tomorrow.”
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: “During the whole weekend we have had issues with the energy management, which didn’t help us at all. However, Esteban was able to constantly improve and showed a good performance. He is in a good position for the race. Adrian could not extract the maximum from the powertrain and was, therefore, handicapped. The past has shown that a lot can happen during the race, thus our objective is to keep the contact to the drivers in front of us and be ready for all eventualities.”
Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “It was a pitty that Adrian couldn’t make it into Q2. We don’t know yet what exactly happened, but we can see in the data that he was missing some speed on the straights. Esteban delivered a solid performance and achieved what was possible today. He made some good progress during FP3 and was able to build on that. Even though the actual positions are not much different from other events before, we are quite satisfied we were able to keep the gap to some of our competitors quite small, which will enable us to race and target a better result tomorrow.“
