Sauber Belgian GP - Spa race report

A promising Saturday turned into a disappointing Sunday for the Sauber F1 Team in Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian Grand Prix. Although both Sergio Pérez and Kamui Kobayashi were initially running in the top ten in their Sauber C30-Ferraris, at the end of the race their results were a retirement and 12th respectively.

Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber F1 Team

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Kamui Kobayashi: 12th

Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 01 / Ferrari 056)
Start on new soft tyres, after 14 laps soft tyres, after 29 laps medium tyres.

“Of course I expected to score some points today. My start was good and I had a couple of nice fights. On the straights I was actually slower than expected, but I don’t know yet why this was. It was also hard to survive with the soft tyres and I was under pressure from Vitaly Petrov. Regarding the accident with Lewis Hamilton, which happened when I was running in fourth, I knew perfectly well he was faster than me so had no reason to fight with him. After he overtook me it was not my intention to get my position back, so I stayed on my line and didn’t expect him to move over. When I pitted on the second lap behind the Safety Car I lost an awful lot of positions. Anyway, the long stint on the medium tyres in the end worked well, but then I was too far away from the points.”

Sergio Perez, Sauber F1 Team missing his front wing

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Sergio Pérez: Retired after 27 laps.

Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 02 / Ferrari 056)
Start on used soft tyres, after 5 laps soft tyres, after 23 laps medium tyres.

“I am very disappointed. I had a good start and beginning to the race. The car was very good and we should have scored points. On lap five I was in seventh when Sébastien Buemi changed his line in front of me under braking, I tried to avoid hitting him but couldn’t as I had lost downforce. I later got a drive through penalty which I did on lap 22. After that I also made my second pit stop. I had dropped way behind and tried to recover from there. I had just overtaken Bruno Senna when I felt there was something seriously wrong at the back of the car, so I drove it carefully back to the pits and that was it for today.”

Peter Sauber, Team Principal:

“For us it was a race of missed opportunities. After a good qualifying I was very much looking forward to the race, but, except for the weather, everything was against us.”

James Key, Technical Director:

“This was a disappointing result after a reasonably promising day yesterday, and the pace was not quite as good as it should have been either, so we need to look at why that was. We could and should have scored points today, but for various reasons it didn’t work out for us. Sergio did well to try and maintain his position at the start, but he had an incident with one of the Toro Rossos, which we need to look at, and subsequently got a drive through penalty, so that pushed him right down the order. There was some damage to his car and the rear axle, which we now need to investigate this as that was part of our problem, and we had to retire him. Kamui lost several places during the safety car period. We called him into the box but for some reason he came in a lap later, so there was a miscommunication that we need to look into. We have to gather ourselves up and go to the next race.”