Race - Bahrain GP report: Sauber Ferrari

The Bahrain Grand Prix, the first night race of the season, ended in disappointment for the Sauber F1 Team. Despite competitive lap times the drivers only managed to finish in 12th (Felipe Nasr) and 14th (Marcus Ericsson). Both drivers were hindered by technical problems. Marcus Ericsson lost a lot of time during his second pitstop due to a mechanical issue when changing the front left wheel. Felipe Nasr was slowed down by a temporary loss of power. So, despite good lap times, the team was not able to convert the good performance into points.

Marcus Ericsson

“I had a really good start into the race. On the first lap I moved up from 13th to ninth. In the first and second stints our lap times were quite strong, keeping up with our direct competitors. We were running as planned, but then unfortunately we had the mistake during the second pit stop due to a mechanical problem that came up when the crew changed the left front wheel. Of course, it is very disappointing, but sometines this happens in racing. We win together, and we loose together. After that our race was extremely compromised. However, I still tried to do my best and during the rest of the race my pace was good. All in all, we showed a reasonable performance and this is what counts for the next race in Barcelona.”

Felipe Nasr

“It was a difficult first lap for me as I got squeezed in turn 1, so I lost a few positions. Afterwards I got stuck in traffic which compromised my race pace during the whole first stint. In the course of the race I lost power for several laps, which made us loose ground. On the positive side of things, I was quite satisfied with our lap times on the medium compound. Overall, I think we could have scored points if we would have had a clean race. It is a shame not to have them.”

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal

“There is no doubt that today we missed a very realistic chance of finishing in the points, particularly as our lap times were competitive. On Marcus’ car we had a technical issue during his second pitstop, where he lost a lot of time. We are sorry for that. Felipe lost time due to a temporary loss of power. The engineers were able to fix this after some laps, but the time lost was too big, and so he was also not able to fight for points like his team mate. Both drivers fought impressively, but we didn’t get any rewards today.”

Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering

“Obviously this is a disappointing result. On Marcus‘ car we had a mechanical issue during his second pitstop when changing the front left wheel, which delayed him by 24 seconds. He was then simply not able to recover from this and couldn’t get the points he would have deserved. Felipe was hindered by a temporary loss of power, which was able to be fixed after some laps, but this cost him 12 seconds. Both drivers drove strongly, and it’s just a shame that we were not able to convert that into points.”