Sauber endured another tough qualifying session in Montreal as Esteban Gutierrez was forced to miss the session after his free practice three crash on Saturday morning, while team-mate Adrian Sutil qualified a lowly sixteenth.
Gutierrez was forced to sit out qualifying while his Sauber mechanics built a new car around the spare chassis after crashing during free practice in the morning. The Mexican will be forced to start from the pit lane, and was unsure what happened that caused him to hit the wall at turn four.
“It was a disappointing day, after we also had some troubles on Friday,” admitted Gutierrez. “Concerning what happened today, we have to further analyse what caused the problem. I came into the corner with a little bit of oversteer, then later something happened and I lost the car completely. We have to find out whether this happened through what I did, or something I had identified earlier. We have to analyse further what caused the incident.
“I know that it’s going to be a lot of work to rebuild the car for tomorrow, and I would like to thank the team for the hard work ahead of them. Tomorrow is another day, and I will do my best.“ Team-mate Sutil will start in sixteenth place on the grid after another difficult session. He admitted making it into the second part of qualifying was something to be happier with but ultimately the car was not handling as the German would like.
“Once again, this was not an easy qualifying,” said Sutil. “However, we made it into Q2 this time, which is a small success, although the performance has not really improved. After qualifying we are basically where we were this morning.
“The car is difficult to drive. We need more downforce and have deficiencies in most areas. The driveability in qualifying was not optimal. It was very tricky to control the car with the throttle, because it is very nervous. So I ended up in P16 for tomorrow. We will do our best.“
Team Principal Monisha Kaltenborn was disappointed about Gutierrez’s crash and qualifying as a whole. She is hopeful though that both drivers can make some progress during the race, as the longer run pace looks slightly better than the short run pace required during qualifying.
“Obviously, its disappointing going into qualifying with just one car,” said Kaltenborn. “With regard to Esteban’s accident, the engineers are still analysing the data. Esteban will be forced to start from the pit lane, which will make things difficult. On the other hand, it is an advantage that he will be allowed to change the set-up of the car and fully focus on the race.
“Also, Adrian hasn’t an easy task. However, looking at the long runs, there is still hope. So we expect that he has the chance to improve in the race.“
Head of Track Engineering at Sauber Giampaolo Dall’Ara looks to have put the crash of Gutierrez down to driver error, with nothing abnormal showing up on the telemetry readings. Like Kaltenborn, he is hopeful that the long run pace will allow both drivers to progress in the race.
“Following Esteban’s accident today, we checked the data from the chassis, i.e. mechanical data, tyre pressures and aerodynamic data, and so far we can’t find anything abnormal,” said Dall’Ara. “The analysis of the powertrain data is not completed yet. It will take some more time before we have the final results.
“Esteban will have to start from the pit lane, so he has to hope for an eventful race. For Adrian, starting from P16 will also not be easy, but the long runs yesterday were quite encouraging. Adrian’s goal must be to stay with the pack in front of him and be ready if an opportunity comes up.”
