Singapore: It was a strong performance by the Sauber F1 Team qualifying tenth and 11th for the Singapore Grand Prix. Esteban Gutiérrez qualified for the top ten for the first time and achieved his best qualifying result in Formula One to date. Nico Hülkenberg was unlucky with the DRS not working properly during a final lap and so just knocking him out of the top ten. However, this is a great position to be in for the race on Sunday, as the long runs looked promising.

Nico Hülkenberg said qualifying went really well up until the last lap of Q2. “I had a problem in sector one on the DRS straight, as my DRS didn’t open in time. I lost a good two tenths there, which would have put us into Q3. We need to look into that now and find out why that happened. As overtaking is quite difficult on this track, it is going to be a difficult day tomorrow. Overall it seems we have made a step forward over the past couple of races, and I hope we can continue that positive trend on Sunday.”

Esteban Gutiérrez said “To qualify tenth is a really special feeling and one that I have missed. I enjoyed every part of the qualifying. The result today was very important, because it’s not fun going into qualifying knowing that you can be around the top ten, but not getting there. At the beginning, it looked a bit difficult today, but I was pushing myself in practice and communicated well with the team. We decided that, in order to make the next step, we need to be more aggressive and be more on the edge. During the practice sessions I was able to try to do that, and it’s great to see it paid off, so a big thank you to the team. I think tomorrow will be a tough race. Tyre degradation will be critical and we need to consider that. We usually have a good race pace and also had that in FP2 yesterday. I’m confident we can push for points on Sunday.”