Sauber struggled to set decent times on single laps during Friday practice at the Nürburgring today with Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi having to settle for P13 and P16 on the timesheets.
“Today was very busy,” said Perez. “In the first session we did some aero tests, and only in the second session worked with the different tyres. We are not as competitive yet as we thought we would be here, but we did a reasonable job today and hopefully in qualifying we can aim for higher positions.”
Kobayashi said that finding grip from the various Pirelli tyre compounds was the issue today, and is hoping for improvements by the time qualifying comes around.
“It was not so easy today,” he said. “We went through our programme with no problems, but overall we are struggling with grip and don't understand why yet. We are not yet as good as we expected we would be, and have to improve for tomorrow.”
Despite struggling to set fast laps, technical director James Key said that it had been a productive day for the team. “In the morning session both cars did a round testing aero items,” he explained. “We were looking at various new parts and did no real set up work in that session.
“In the afternoon we concentrated on the tyres available. We ran the test tyre Pirelli provided, which was a soft compound, and it looked okay. We also ran the standard soft tyre for here, and did some race runs towards the end of the session. Generally it was a very productive day. Mainly we now need to work a little on getting the tyres to work in the colder temperatures.”
