The Sauber team was better than most at taking advantage of the challenging weather conditions during Friday’s qualifying in Shanghai ahead of Saturday’s sprint. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou qualified for the final session, although they ultimately only reached the fifth row.
Valtteri Bottas (9th): “Great day for our team: both cars are in the top ten – that’s exactly how you want to start the race weekend! The track conditions were difficult, and that always makes the task difficult, but the good news is that we would have achieved good results regardless of the weather conditions. I’m really happy for Zhou and his Chinese fans, because reaching the qualifying final on your home circuit is always a special achievement. Although it is still difficult to judge the balance of forces after a single training session, especially if we take into account the change in the condition of the track, we will try to do our best tomorrow.
The team has done a great job and with the extra support from the Chinese public we will try to earn points in the sprint, but also show equally good results in tomorrow’s qualifying.”
Guanyu Zhou (10th): “It’s great that we managed to make it to the last session. In the first and second parts of today’s qualifying I was able to do good laps, the potential of the car allowed it, but in the final, when it started to rain, we only had the opportunity to do one lap.
I tried this although everyone had a lot of problems due to the low grip. I’m happy with the results of the day as both team cars made it to the final session and the fans gave us incredible support. And I’m curious to see what will happen the rest of the weekend.
Tomorrow only the top eight will get points, but we will act consistently: today both Sauber cars reached the qualifying final, but tomorrow we will try to do our best. Everything is still ahead of us, and in the sprint we will attack from start to finish.
The opponents we are competing with for points are strong, but we will try to make the most of every opportunity, we are ready.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
