Sauber seeks urgent solution

Date published : 15 Mar 2010 - 08:56:16

Peter Sauber says his crew must take rapid action to understand the problem that took both Saubers out of the Bahrain Grand Prix - but is optimistic that the cars competitiveness was picking up in the race.Having shone in winter testing, Sauber was one of the disappointments of the Sakhir race weekend.Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi were in the midfield throughout practice, failed to reach Q3, and then both retired with hydraulic problems.Sauber acknowledged that the apparently similar failures were a cause for concern - but pointed out that his team's race pace had been stronger than its practice and qualifying form."The race itself was okay from a performance point of view, with both drivers fighting for positions before they both stopped with a hydraulic problem," he said."We have to analyse and to solve this problem very quickly."De la Rosa agreed that things had been going better in the race, even though he lost ground avoiding the first lap mayhem."I felt we had a car that was good enough to fight for points, and there still was a chance to achieve this when I was called into the pits," said the Spaniard, who was running 12th before he retired.But with the weekend having turned into an anti-climax overall given the strong winter build-up, Sauber admitted that this wasn't how he wanted his first race back in charge to turn up."I obviously had different hopes for how I would return to Formula 1 as a team principal, particularly after our promising winter testing," he said."But even before the race our grid positions were disappointing."