Nico Hulkenberg feels Sauber have a lot of improving to do in order to reach Q3 once again in Singapore. Hulkenberg shone at Monza to qualify third and while he doesn’t expect similar heroics tomorrow, the German does think the car has the potential to be competitive.
“During FP1 we struggled a bit with the set-up of the car and couldn’t really find a good rhythm. This afternoon was much better. I felt a lot more confident in the car. However, there is still room for improvement, especially on the option tyre. I think we can find quite a bit more in the lap time. Overall it was quite interesting that the harder tyre was quite weak for me during the long run, and the option performed a lot better. In that regard we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Teammate Esteban Gutierrez was sixteenth today, two places behind Hulkenberg, and is expecting the hot conditions to make life difficult in Sunday night’s race.
“It was an okay Friday. We managed to get in some good laps and we were able to get through some things that we were planning to do in order to improve qualifying. My experience is improving, but I need to work on certain things. We worked on the set-up of the car. The long runs look okay. There is a lot of thermal degradation on the tyres, which will be quite a challenge during the race. This is something we need to look into to try to find the right compromise for qualifying and a good race pace. Overall the car feels good, but we need to keep working on looking to qualifying tomorrow.”
