F1 | Sauber, Leclerc: “Competitive if we solve the car's problems with little fuel on board”

Sauber's start to the season was certainly positive, seeing the car and the team grow race after race. The first points had already arrived in Bahrain, the second race of the year, thanks to Marcus Ericsson, who managed to finish in the top ten. Things went even better in Azerbaijan, where Charles Leclerc managed to get his first Q2 in qualifying and finish sixth in the race, scoring his first points in Formula 1 and achieving the best result for the Swiss team since his placing (always sixth place). by Felipe Nasr in Russia 3 years ago.

An unexpected and pleasant result, not only in terms of ranking, but above all in terms of performance, because the C37 proved to be truly competitive in the race, capable of fighting with much more renowned mid-table teams, especially in the first part of the race. With a good fuel load on board, the single-seater proved to be balanced and competitive, as Charles Leclerc demonstrated in Azerbaijan, while with a more unloaded car, difficulties emerged, particularly in managing the softer tyres. However, the Monegasque driver expresses optimism for what he has seen in the first races of the season, hoping that a solution can be found to the difficulties encountered with the lighter car: "As I said before the race, at the moment our race pace is better than the one in qualifying. Now we need to understand why this happens and how to improve our pace when the car has little fuel on board. But if we can solve these problems, we can be very competitive, because our race pace at the beginning of the race was really good. Towards the end of the race, however, we struggled a little more" commented Leclerc.