09/07/2011
NEWS STORY
Despite some pretty fickle English weather, the Sauber F1 Team had its best qualifying result of the season for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez capitalised on a good third free practice to be eighth and 12th respectively in qualifying. While Q1 started in the dry, a sudden rain shower came before they could change from hard to soft tyres, but this did not bother either Sauber C30-Ferrari as they both had comfortable margins for getting through to Q2. Perez missed out on Q3 by one of the smallest margins possible, while eighth was the best result for Kobayashi in his F1 career.
Kamui Kobayashi: "It was a tricky qualifying with the constantly changing conditions. It was extremely difficult to predict what would be right and what would be wrong, but we have handled this quite well. In Q1 I struggled a bit because I wasn't used to the car's balance on the hard tyres, and didn't have a chance to do a lap on the soft compound because the rain set in. In Q2 the track conditions were still tricky and damp, but in Q3, when I did my final lap on fresh soft tyres, everything worked out the way it should do. I am happy with this lap and I am especially thankful to my team because, due to their hard work, we recovered from what happened on Friday morning. Now I want to make the most of all this in tomorrow's race."
Sergio Perez: "I think we did a good job today. It is a shame to miss Q3 by 36 thousandths of a second, but I'm quite happy with our performance. Because of the changing conditions it was not an easy qualifying. Overall here our car is good. This is thanks to some improvements but also down to the circuit. The high speed corners suit us quite well. From where I will start the race I have every chance to score points tomorrow, and I am very much looking forward to my first British Grand Prix."
Peter Sauber, Team Principal: "It has become even more difficult to get into the top ten, and this means you are going to be even happier when you make it. Congratulations to Kamui and his crew, as today timing was also very important. Sergio's 12th place is also alright, and he has saved a set of fresh tyres for the race."
James Key, Technical Director: "I think all in all it was a reasonable day. This morning we had the first dry running of the weekend, so there was a lot of work to do. A lot of the test items from Friday had to be carried over to a very busy third free practice, but we pretty much proved everything we needed to, which was good. In qualifying it was tricky, as the conditions were very, very variable and quite difficult to predict, even though we had radar showing that the rain was quite light. It would have been great to get both cars into Q3, but we got one so we can't complain at all. Sergio did a great job to be 12th, and Kamui did very well to get through. Our position is okay, although it would have been nice to be a little bit further ahead, but we know our race pace is very strong compared to our qualifying pace so we will be looking to make the most of our starting positions tomorrow."
To check out our Silverstone qualifying gallery, click here.