There were mixed emotions for Sauber after qualifying at India today. Sergio Perez showed what potential the car has this weekend and will start from eighth, but a telemetry problem on Kamui Kobayashi’s car meant the Japanese driver will start a disappointing seventeenth.
It was a particularly strong performance from Perez, given he had to not take part in the first practice session yesterday due to illness.
“Today’s result is a nice surprise and it was hard work to get there. I am personally very happy with P8 and I am really pleased for the team. It was a great effort from the guys to improve the car after Friday when we were struggling so much. In Q2 I think I managed to get in a perfect lap. The one in Q3 wasn’t that good but still okay.”
“I am very motivated for tomorrow’s race and want to score as many points as possible.”
Kobayashi meanwhile was left to rue what might have been.
“It is a shame I ended up 17th in qualifying. Actually the pace of the car is better now than it was before, but in the end in Q2 it all went wrong. I had decided to take fuel for only one lap and then we made a mistake with the car’s settings, which caused the brake balance to be completely wrong. I then didn’t have a second chance because of the fuel. So I did my best time on a used set of soft tyres instead of making use of the fresh ones at the end.”
“However, tomorrow we have to make the most out of the tyres we still have available and the fact this circuit allows for overtaking.”
“After a difficult start to the weekend, which was mainly dominated by finding the right tyre management, the team and the drivers were able to improve the performance significantly in qualifying,” Monisha Kalternborn added.
“Eighth for Sergio is a very good result under these circumstances. Unfortunately Kamui was not able to benefit from the improvement due to a technical issue which was clearly not his mistake.”
