Today in an interview with Autosport, Sauber driver Esteban Guiterrez fears Sauber’s budget is hindering their chances of finding a solution to a problem that has left them “stuck”.
Guiterrez and his new team-mate Adrian Sutil have yet to get off the mark this season, leaving Sauber as the only team aside from Caterham that has failed to score. Sauber have been hampered by an overweight car at the start of this season and the team have taken steps to lighten the load, but even that did not yield the gains they had hoped.
In his interview with Autosport today, Gutierrez now fears that the Sauber team are “stuck” and are struggling to make improvement to help extract more pace from their car. Guiterrez stated the following:-
‘I think the explanation is pretty simple as we don’t have enough downforce on the car and on the powertrain side, we cannot change things around because with the regulations we are not allowed to develop on the engine side.
‘Also, on the car side, we are a team which does not have the budget of the big teams to change everything around. We are taking risks at the moment. We are exploring the car, taking different approaches, because at the moment we are stuck. It’s probably not bringing the best consistency, but we need to keep searching.’
As Guiterrez has stated in his interview today, it is clear for all to see the Sauber have and continue to struggle to extract the pace and performance from the car that
they need. As he rightly points out, there is only limited things that the Sauber team can do with the resources and capital that they have alongside the technical regulations that have been introduced for this season.
Even though Sauber have tried as much as possible to bring improvements to their car, it is clear that it will not be enough to close the gap to their rivals. I would have to agree with Guiterrez and all that Sauber can do for the rest of the season ahead is explore and analyse every option that is available to them to see if they can improve as much as they possibly can.
But while Sauber are searching and looking for ways to improve their performance, further on in his interview today, Gutierrez predicts a difficult season half of the season for the Swiss team. He added the following:-
‘We cannot fall down into that fold because last year was pretty special. The tyres were changed in the middle of the season and we found something pretty unusual, and this year that is not really the case. We are not really far off expectations from the windtunnel, so there’s not really something that’s going to change the whole situation.
‘We have to be truthful to ourselves and understand that we cannot just sit and hope that things are going to change. Last year we were pretty good in high-speed corners, so when we got to a track with high speed corners, we thought it could be a good opportunity for us. This year everywhere is quite weak [for our car].I have to say at the moment, it could not be worse.’
Even though as Guiterrez states, last year Sauber after the change of the tyre compounds after the British Grand Prix found pace in the second half of the season but I do feel that Guiterrez believes that this could be the best that the team could achieve for this year.
And I have to say that it is really sad to hear from that as many pundits and fans have a soft spot in their heart for Sauber and would love to see them do well. But as Guiterrez has said, if they are already close to their expectations, then I do not see them improving as much as they would like or need to be.
I would have to agree with Guiterrez and that all they can do is use whatever is at their disposal and hope that even a slight change could bring a small improvement to them. And the Sauber team have to continue trying to find this in order to see if they can salvage anything from this season and see if they can close the gap to their rivals while also starting to prepare for the 2015 season.
It would be hard not to agree with Guiterrez and say that at the moment, it couldn’t be worse for him and the Sauber team. This season has saw Sauber struggling to perform on the track and has seen them slip behind their rivals Marussia. It is sad to report that now I would class Sauber as ‘back marker’ team and not as a midfield team as they deserve to be.
But this season Sauber just haven’t managed to put everything together and give Guiterrez and Sutil the car that they need to in order to challenge the midfield for points finishes. Sauber are now battling Caterham and Marussia for the last three places in the Constructor’s Championship, a fight that I can see Marussia winning overall, but Sauber just holding off Caterham for tenth place.
Just goes to show just what a difference a year makes in Formula One and how things can change at the drop of a hat. But I really hope that Sauber try and salvage something from this season, but they must now turn their attentions to the 2015 season, they really do.
