Both Sauber F1 Team drivers will start the Spanish Grand Prix from the eighth row of the grid on Sunday, with Felipe Nasr ahead of Marcus Ericsson, but both drivers felt they were lower on the grid than they had hoped to have been.
Nasr was disappointed to end up fifteenth on the grid after struggling with his tyre temperatures during qualifying, but hopes to be in with a chance of scoring points on Sunday.
“After FP3 I felt good with the changes we made for qualifying,” revealed Nasr. “On my last run in Q2 I was a bit too aggressive with the result that I had a lot of oversteer.
“The rear tyres were overheating when driving the car on the limit. It is not going to be an easy race for us, but we will do our best to fight for points.”
Team-mate Ericsson was even more disheartened to be eliminated in the first phase of qualifying, missing out on joining his team-mate by just 0.171s. He knows Sunday’s race will hard, but admitted he will be trying his best to move up the order.
“Overall it is a bit disappointing,” reflected Ericsson. “We are starting further down the grid than we had hoped for.
“The first run in Q1 was OK. We were able to find some improvements when we went out on the second set of tyres, but it was not enough to make it into Q2.
“We need to analyse and understand the reasons for it. Tomorrow we have to make the best out of our positions.”
