Hungarian GP Sauber race notes

Mika Salo finished 10th in a tough Hungarian Grand Prix, but Pedro Diniz had to retire after 63 laps when on course for a top eight finish.

Pedro Diniz:
I was pleased with my race because I managed to overtake quite a lot of people and recorded good lap times. I stayed clear of traffic, pushed hard and exploited some great strategy from the team. Then with 12 laps left the car just stopped without warning. We still have to investigate why.

Mika Salo:
I thought I made a really good start as I stayed down on the inside, but unfortunately everyone seemed to be on the outside. When the guys in front of me braked I was hemmed in and couldn’t move round them so I had to brake at the same time and lost three places in the first corner. I had a lot of understeer today, and towards the end it was so acute that I thought at one point that I had a flat tyre. What was really annoying was the Minardi that held us all up and bunched us together. That lost me a lot of time, and the trouble here is that it is so hard to pass even slow cars.

Peter Sauber:
After an unlucky start it was not possible here for Mika to recover lost positions on the track. But thanks to some good strategy he was able to overtake Wurz in the first pit stop. Pedro drove a strong race and thanks to a good, flexible strategy worked out in conjunction with his engineer and the whole team he was able to pass Irvine. Unfortunately he retired with a technical problem within the powertrain that we are still investigating. It is astonishing that so many cars were reliable in the high temperature we experienced today, and the important thing for us is that our race speed was again sufficient to outrun our closest competitor, Jaguar.