Sergio Perez - Photo Credit: Sauber Motorsport AG
Sergio Perez said that he was ‘very happy’ with his qualifying session today in Bahrain as he put his Sauber in a better-than-expected eighth place.
Like Perez, Kamui Kobayashi noticed a big improvement between this morning’s free practice session and qualifying, but could not match the pace of his team-mate. The Japanese driver will start the race from twelfth place tomorrow.
“Today was a very good qualifying and another great effort by the team,” said Perez. “The result is a lot better than we expected after free practice. We really managed to maximise the car's potential today.
“The target now is to gain some positions at the start and then we will see how the race develops. It will be pretty tricky for everybody tomorrow in terms of tyre degradation.
“Another podium doesn't look realistic at all; this track isn't an easy one for us anyway. But we will go for points.”
Kobayashi is also aiming for a decent haul of points tomorrow, and is hopeful that overtaking should not be too difficult around this circuit.
“Overall the car was much better in qualifying than it had been in free practice this morning,” he said. “Basically we have gone back to yesterday's set-up and that was the right decision.
“This circuit here should be fairly good for overtaking. Of course straight line speed is essential for that and I hope we can do well tomorrow.”
Giampaolo Dall'Ara, Head of Track Engineering at Sauber, explained that qualifying went pretty much to plan today.
“The result is in the region we expected it to be before we came here,” he said. “We were aware that it would be difficult to be as good as in China, but everything went okay today.
“This track is definitely not easy for us but then qualifying was fine and both drivers did a good job. Technically there were no problems. For the race the trick will be good tyre management without sacrificing too much pace. We are definitely in a position to fight for points.”
