Friday, 17 April 2015

Sauber F1 Team continue to progress in Bahrain

(Sauber F1 Team)

The Sauber F1 Team showed on Friday that they have really made progress in 2015. Following on from their second double point’s finish of the season last weekend in China, Felipe Nasr ended Friday’s running in Bahrain in eighth place. 

The Brazilian completed 27 laps with a fastest time of 1m 35.793s. Speaking following his day in the car, Nasr stated:

It was a good day. The car was behaving quite well during both practice sessions. During the first practice session we had a few issues with the brakes. After that was sorted out, I felt the car was going in the right direction. In the late afternoon we were able to confirm this as we had a good pace. We also seem to have quite a reasonable balance for the car during the long-runs. Overall, I think we anticipated some changes here in Bahrain so prioritised traction and the braking zones. Tomorrow we have to make sure we go in the same direction.

Marcus Ericsson who finished the opening session this morning in 17th place had a better afternoon session as the Swedish driver completed 34 laps on his way to setting the eleventh fastest time of the day afternoon in the Sauber 34. Ericsson’s fastest time of the day was 1m 36.148s. Speaking at the end of the day he stated:

The first session was not ideal, as I did not feel comfortable in the car. In FP2 we made some adjustments and it was working better again. We still have some parts to optimise, but overall it was a good step forward. It was quite a decent session in which we collected valuable data. We did short and long runs on the soft and medium compounds. I think we are where we want to be. For tomorrow we have to make sure that we put it all together, and then we will be strong again.

The Sauber F1 Team head into this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, round four of the 2015 Formula One season in fourth place in the Constructors championship on 19 points. The Hinwil based outfit will be hoping to build on their strong start to the year this weekend and head into the three week break before the start of the European season with more points.

Speaking following today’s action, Sauber’s Head of Track Engineering Giampaolo Dall’Ara stated:

On the programme side it was a smooth day. Neither Sauber C34-Ferrari had major issues, so we were able to run through the planned schedule. The first practice session was not of any significance for the race, as we were having extremely high temperatures. We managed to put together an aero programme for both cars which was quite productive. In the late afternoon we started to work on the race preparation by evaluating the car and doing long-runs. Our programme was slightly interrupted by the red flag at the end of the session. Otherwise, it was a good day.

© Ben Johnston 2015

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