Friday Report: Sauber: The heat makes a difference

After encouraging beginnings in Melbourne, despite the disqualification of its two drivers, Peter Sauber’s team wishes to confirm its performance, even if Sergio Perez will surely not be able to replicate his race with only one pit stop. What will the Sauber, equipped with only fully legal parts, deliver?

Kamui Kobayashi – 14th and 14th:

« Although I am not personally suffering from the high temperatures, they do make a difference. I can’t complain about the tires, given that they are very good despite the harsh conditions here. However, we are struggling to find the right setup, so we need to improve the car’s stability during braking, and I think that’s what we will do for tomorrow. »

Sergio Perez – 18th and 15th:

It is clearly very hot in the car, and it is obvious that the race is going to be very physically demanding. My run with the soft tires was not good because I had to stop after a yellow flag came out. I think we have work to do to improve the car for tomorrow.

James Key:

« We had a standard program to do for this weekend, and also the two sets of Pirelli tires, which are development tires. We used one this morning, and the other in the afternoon. This gave us some useful data, but I am sure it will also provide data to Pirelli. It seems that with the ambient conditions and track temperature, as we thought, the tires react differently from what we have seen before. In the afternoon, we just worked on the tires and on work for the race. I think we need to carefully look at the data tonight because we are losing about three-tenths in the first sequence of corners, and a bit more time in the second sector. The car’s balance at low speed is not ideal for the drivers, so we will see tonight and tomorrow morning with a better-balanced car. »