As the second race of the season approaches, all eyes will be on Sauber to see if their great pace and points finishes in Australia was a one-time thing or whether they can compete for consistent top ten finishes.
It was Felipe Nasr who had the better fifth place finish in Australia, and his team-mate Marcus Ericsson finished in eighth which was a decent result considering he had a poor qualifying and only started sixteenth; the two McLarens were the only two cars behind him, but he still finished in the points. As the inter-team battle moves into the next round of F1, the Malaysia Grand Prix, Ericsson will be very keen to improve on his qualifying this time round as he looks to build on his Australia performance.
The team will certainly be looking to improve on Sauber’s Malaysia performance last year, though that won’t take too much work, as both drivers failed to finish the race. Adrian Sutil was forced to stop on lap 32 with a power unit failure and team-mate Esteban Gutierrez with a gearbox failure just a few laps after on lap 35. However, Sauber look to be in a much better state and have two young drivers on good form.
Reserve driver Raffaele Marciello will get his first run out in the car during FP1 in Malaysia, taking the place of Felipe Nasr and the young star will be expected to put some good times in as people know now the capabilities of the car. One driver that will not be seen driving the Sauber is Giedo Van Der Garde who has reached a settlement with the team and will no longer be wanting a drive, therefore Sauber will be hoping things run more smoothly for them this weekend whilst starting to try to repair their damaged reputation from the contract saga.
