Sauber's Gutiérrez tests different tyre compounds on day 3 at Bahrain

Bahrain International Circuit, 21st February 2014 – On the third day of testing in Bahrain the Sauber F1 Team was able to practice pit stops and gain experience on the soft and super soft tyre compounds for the first time in Bahrain. Further aero tests were also on the programme, and in total Gutiérrez completed 96 laps today.

Esteban Gutierrez, Sauber F1 Team

Photo by: XPB Images

Driver: Esteban Gutiérrez

Weather: Sunny, air 20-27 °C, track 21-33 °C

Chassis / engine: C33-02 / Ferrari

Laps today: 96 laps, 519.552 km

Fastest lap: 1:37.180 min

Giampaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: “Today the weather conditions were better than in the past two days. We worked on various set-ups to cope with the different tyre compounds used today. It was the first time that we had explored the soft and super soft compounds here in Bahrain, and we were able to do a reasonable amount of laps. This morning we fine tuned the set-up and systems based on the experience from the last few days and did qualifying preparations. In the afternoon we worked on race preparations. We got some long runs done and also a few pit stops throughout the day.”

Esteban Gutiérrez: “It was another productive day. I did a good amount of laps and was able to drive decent long runs. We did have small issues, but were able to solve them quickly. Mechanically and aerodynamically the car is working well, and it is becoming more consistent. There is still some work to do in other areas, but we are making progress. I was able to explore a lot of ‘new-set’ tyres, and this is very helpful to get to know qualifying and race procedures. It is important to understand these procedures properly, so I know what to expect and to be able to predict how the tyres react in certain situations. This means I can extract the maximum out of them.”

Sauber F1 Team