The Sauber F1 Team saw both Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson come close to making it through to the final part of qualifying, but ultimately ended up twelfth and thirteenth on the grid for Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
Nasr was displaced from final qualifying in the final moments of the second session by Sergio Perez, and ultimately dropped to twelfth on the grid when Carlos Sainz jumped ahead of both of them. He remains confident however of scoring points for the third time in four races on Sunday.
“It was a shame to just miss out on Q3 because of less than a tenth, but I think we extracted the maximum out of the car,” said Nasr. “It was difficult in Q1 as some of our competitors seem to be very strong.
“Twelfth is a good starting position for tomorrow. Considering our good pace during the long-runs, I am confident about fighting for points.”
Ericsson was four-tenths of a second adrift of Nasr in qualifying, but was only one place behind in thirteenth, but admitted he had been struggling behind the wheel of the Sauber throughout practice, and only got to grips with the car towards the end of FP3 on Saturday afternoon.
“First of all, FP3 was a difficult session,” revealed Ericsson. “I struggled a lot to get a good feeling in the car and it was quite windy on track. Towards the end of the session we managed to sort things out and driving-wise it felt better.
“In Qualifying we knew beforehand it would be a close competition. Certainly, we would have liked to be in Q3 again, but overall we did a decent job. We are in good shape for tomorrow’s race.”
