Sauber fail to score points for the first time in 2012

For the first time in 2012, Sauber have left a Grand Prix empty handed as both Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi failed to finish within the top ten. After Sergio Perez’s fantastic 2nd place in Malaysia, the team have unfortunately only scored one World Championship point, from Kobayashi in China.

Sergio Perez suffered from tyre degradation throughout the race in Bahrain, and subsequently lost out to Michael Schumacher in the closing stages of the race. The German was sprinting up the field after starting 22nd, and managed to pass Perez for 10th and the final points scoring position.

The other Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi finished just behind Perez, in 13th position. The initial race strategy from Sauber was to have the Japanese driver on a 2-stop strategy, but when tyre degradation came earlier than expected in the second stint, Sauber were forced to pit Kobayashi for a third time with only seven laps remaining.

Kamui Kobayashi was also very disappointed with the start of the race, with the Sauber apparently having too much wheel spin off the line at the start.

“Well, for me the start was too slow.” Explained Kobayashi, after a disappointing Bahrain Grand Prix. “I had too much wheel spin and we will look into that. I started on a set of new medium compound tyres and we tried a two stop strategy but in the end it didn’t work out. Our problem was a general lack of speed and we will work hard to fix it.”

“The key point of the race was on lap one when we lost positions.” Commented Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Sauber’s Head of Track Engineering. “The start was possibly not so good. That’s something we have to look into. From that point on we were unable to recover. Altogether we were not strong enough today to recover from all that.”

Sauber head to the Mugello test at the beginning of May and the next Grand Prix in Spain scratching their heads slightly, trying to work out what went wrong this weekend in Bahrain.

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