The Sauber F1 Team decided to do a split strategy during the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday in order to give themselves the best opportunity to score their first points of the 2017 season, but came up just short.
Pascal Wehrlein finished eleventh in his first race for the team after being replaced by Antonio Giovinazzi in the opening two races, with the German starting on the Supersoft tyre before switching to the Softs, while Marcus Ericsson attempted the reverse strategy but retired late on with a gearbox failure.
Team Principal Monisha Kaltenborn felt a one-stop strategy was the most likely way Sauber would find themselves in the points, and felt eleventh was ‘a reasonable result’ at the end of the day.
“A reasonable result, as we knew it would have been a difficult race,” said Kaltenborn. “We decided beforehand to choose different strategies in order to benefit from a one-stop-strategy.
“Marcus was the only driver starting on soft tyres. Unfortunately, he was not able to finish the race due to a gearbox failure just a couple of laps before the chequered flag. Pascal was luckier – he put in a good performance finishing the race in P11.”
