The penultimate day of testing saw Sauber go from one extreme to the other – the most amount of laps in one day on Friday to the least amount of laps in a day on Saturday.
Esteban Gutierrez completed 106 laps for the team on Friday, whilst Adrian Sutil couldn’t even manage one after they encountered what the team described as an ‘anomaly’ on the engine.
The Ferrari-powered C33 came to a halt at the entrance to the pitlane with smoke billowing from the rear, hinting at a failure of the V6 unit.
After that the team was forced to abandon the morning sessio and instead chose to fully focus on the final day of testing on Sunday.
“Unfortunately today we have encountered an anomaly on the engine and as a precautionary measure we decided to change it, which meant that we could only manage one lap in the morning,” said Giampaolo Dall’Ara, head of track engineering.
“However, assembly takes considerably longer and at a certain stage during the afternoon we decided to focus on tomorrow and be ready for the final day of testing. The crew worked tirelessly and hopefully tomorrow we can get on with our programme.”
Sutil bemoaned the lack of running, but he will share driving duties with Gutierrez on the final day of testing and he hopes to cover some mileage then.
“This is why we are testing,” he said. “Of course I would like to drive as much as possible, but you have to look at the overall picture and the team decided to focus on and get ready for the final day of testing tomorrow.
“I would rather have these issues appearing here at the test than on the first race weekend. It shows how complex the new car and powertrain are and that we are exploring them to the limits.
“Although the garage doors were closed, the engineers and mechanics worked incredibly hard and hopefully we’ll have a better day tomorrow.”
