Sauber struggled with tire management on first day testing in Barcelona

Esteban Gutierrez, Sauber C32 stops on the circuit

Photo by: XPB Images

In the morning, Esteban Gutiérrez mainly concentrated on aero work, while in the afternoon he did tyre comparisons with the medium and the hard compounds, and he worked on the set-up of the car. He completed 68 laps.

Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: "We spent a lot of the morning evaluating some aerodynamic and mechanical parts on the car. We were also working on the hard and the medium tyres, but the track conditions were not ideal.

We gathered a lot of data with some special instrumentation, and now we need to look at it. Due to a few small issues we weren’t able to complete our full programme, but we are confident we will be back on track tomorrow.

Esteban Gutiérrez: "It was quite a tricky day with the tyres. We were struggling with tyre management and, as a result, degradation. We tried different things in the morning, but then in the afternoon we had some issues with the set-up of the car.

The good thing is we have a lot of data to analyse. This will be the basis for us to understand everything.“

Fast facts:

- Circuit: Circuito de Cataluna, 4.655 km
- Driver: Esteban Gutiérrez
- Weather: Overcast, air 13-18°C, track 14 -23°C
- Chassis/engine: C32-2/Ferrari 056
- Laps today: 68
- Fastest lap : 1:25.124

What comes next: Tomorrow, Nico Hülkenberg will take over from Esteban.

Sauber F1 Team