Sauber Friday Report

Malaysian GP - Practice

The Sauber F1 Team had a trouble-free first day of practice ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang. Both drivers completed their scheduled programmes. Kamui Kobayashi, who as a mark of respect for the recent tragic events in Japan has a special helmet design, is not happy with the set-up of his Sauber C30-Ferrari, while Sergio Pérez also believes there is room for improvement for tomorrow.

Weather: hot and humid, dry track, 27-32°C air, 28-47°C track

Kamui Kobayashi:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 03 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 14th / 1:40.872 min (27 laps)
2nd Practice: 14th / 1:39,398 min (29 laps)

Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

“Although I don’t personally mind the high temperatures, they do make a difference. I can’t complain about the tyres, as they are fine despite the conditions. However, we are struggling with the set-up. Most importantly we have to improve braking stability and I think that’s what we are going to do overnight.”

Sergio Pérez:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 01 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 18th / 1:41.642 min (24 laps)
2nd Practice: 15th / 1:39.603 min (34 laps)

Sergio Perez, Sauber F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

“It is obviously very hot in the car, and it is clear the race will become very demanding physically. My run with the soft tyres was not good because I had to pit after a yellow flag came out. Generally I think we have some work to do to improve the car for tomorrow.”

James Key, Technical Director:

“We had a standard programme to work through this weekend, and also two extra sets of tyres from Pirelli, which was a development tyre. We ran one set in the morning and one in the afternoon. That gave us some useful data, but I am sure also some useful data for Pirelli. It seems here with the ambient conditions and particularly the track temperature, as we thought was likely to be the case, the tyres are certainly reacting in a different way to what we have seen before.

The degradation is higher and the warm up is no issue at all, as you would imagine. In the afternoon we just worked through the tyre programmes and a race run for each driver on tyres. I think we need to look carefully at the data this evening because we are losing about three tenths in the first couple of corners, and a little bit of time in the middle sector. The balance of the car in low speeds is not ideal for the drivers, so we will look at that overnight and look forward to running in free practice three with a better balanced car.”

Source: Sauber