Esteban Gutierrez was one of the stars of qualifying at Interlagos, qualifying eleventh for the Sauber F1 Team after missing a lot of track time on Friday with various car issues. Team-mate Adrian Sutil was two places further back on the grid, with both drivers hoping to finish the Brazilian Grand Prix in the points on Sunday.
After sitting out the majority of first practice and then suffering more mechanical woe in second practice on Friday, Gutierrez came back fighting on Saturday and had his best qualifying session of the year to finish eleventh, and the Mexican driver was satisfied with the result.
“Eleventh in qualifying is a satisfying result for the team and also for me,” insisted Gutierrez. “Because of some technical issues I lost a lot of track time yesterday, but the team did a great job last night building up the car for today.
“I managed to put in some good laps, so we will have a great opportunity in the race tomorrow. I will fight from the beginning to the end of the race to get the points we deserve.”
Team-mate Sutil was unable to match his efforts from Austin last weekend where he made it into the final part of qualifying for the first time, but was happy to make it into Q2. He insists the objective for the race on Sunday is to secure the team’s first points of 2014.
“Qualifying was not easy today,” reflected Sutil. “At least we made it into Q2, and I think 13th is a good starting position.
“We are looking forward to the race tomorrow, in which I can hopefully move up closer to the front. The objective is still to get the first points.”
