19/06/2016
NEWS STORY
The Sauber F1 Team saw the chequered flag at the first European Grand Prix on the Baku City Circuit in P12 (Felipe Nasr) and P17 (Marcus Ericsson). On the fast street circuit, both drivers were able to gain positions with their Sauber C35-Ferraris compared to their starting positions (15/20), which was also the case due to retirements.
As the fourth oldest Formula One team, the Sauber F1 Team reached another outstanding milestone in its 24th Grand Prix season: Since 1993, the Swiss team has covered more than 200.000 race kilometres in the 411 Grands Prix it has participated in.
Marcus Ericsson: "It was a disappointing race for me. Straight from the start the tyre behaviour was different from what we expected. We calculated that they would last more laps than they actually did. On the first stint my soft tyres were dropping off a lot, so we had to switch our planned one stop strategy to a two stopper. Overall, I could not get the tyres to work properly, so my pace was not good enough. The only time I got a better feeling and the tyres to work was towards the end of the race, because of the lower temperatures.
Felipe Nasr: "Overall, I am satisfied with my performance today. I fought very hard from the beginning to the end, so we can be pleased with P12. We maximised our performance on track as well as on the strategy-side. I was close to the points today, but just not close enough. I am satisfied, but we are still not there with what we want to achieve. We want to score points, and we are all highly motivated to get there."
Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: "A new Grand Prix is always a huge challenge for teams as well as for the organiser – the Formula 1 debut in Baku was a success. Also our team did a good job during the weekend. Felipe put in a satisfying performance using his opportunities from the beginning until the finish-line. Marcus had a more difficult starting position in P20. He improved his lap times after his second pit stop, but he generally struggled more with the tyres due to the high temperatures. We can build on these positions."
Check out our Sunday gallery, here.