F1 GP China | Sauber, Bortoleto satisfied with the fourteenth time

Shanghai - The Sauber seems to replicate the results of the Australian qualifiers in the first Sprint Qualifying of the year: Gabriel Bortoleto earns access to SQ2, taking fourteenth place, while the veteran Nico Hulkenberg he is excluded in SQ1 with the nineteenth time.

An inexplicable performance for the German, who had instead shown himself to be competitive in the first and only free practice session of the weekend, which he had concluded with the sixth time. Bortoleto's performances however give hope for the rest of the weekend: there is still the qualifying to be run, at the end of the Sprint Race, to brighten up the weekend.

Hulkenberg: “Competitive times in free practice, I don’t know what happened”

“Unfortunately my Sprint Qualifying ended earlier than expected. I think the first attempt was promising, but in the second one many drivers improved, while we didn’t manage to do that. We will have to look at the data again to understand what happened and how we can improve. In practice my times were competitive but, for some reason, we couldn’t repeat that in qualifying.”

Bortoleto: “Encouraging start, I’m satisfied”

“It’s an encouraging start to the weekend. SQ1 went well and I gave it my all in SQ2, but closing the gap of six tenths to the top ten would have been complicated. I’m still happy with our result. The wind made things difficult but, all in all, I’m happy with the improvements we’ve made. Now we focus on tomorrow, first with the Sprint and then Qualifying: we’ll keep pushing to take advantage of every opportunity.”