Team Talk - Sunday in Miami

Sauber

Nico Hulkenberg
“It’s been a pretty clean race today and felt like one of the better ones this year. I managed to stay out of trouble at Turn One, when Lawson and Doohan collided, and worked on building a decent race pace. In contrast to most of the other cars I was on a reverse strategy, starting with hard tyres to deliver a long first stint. We didn't take the opportunity of the first Virtual Safety Car to make a pit stop, which is something we need to review with the team. However, it feels like we’ve taken another step forward this weekend. With a bit more performance and improved car balance, we believe we can get closer to fighting for points. With those improvements in mind, we’re now looking forward to starting the European part of the season.”

Gabriel Bortoleto

“It was a decent race up to the point we had to retire. We were solidly running in P13, just behind Ocon and ahead of Gasly, and I felt we could’ve held that position to the end. The pace was what we expected—we were a bit behind Haas and RB but still in the mix. Unfortunately, I started losing power on the straights in, what became my final laps, then had two big cuts in the corners, and eventually the car just shut down completely. From what I’ve been told, it looks like a fuel system issue that affected us, but I haven’t had time to analyse it with the team yet. It’s a shame, especially as DNFs have been rare in my career, but that’s part of the game. We can still take quite a few positive from the weekend—our single-lap performance and the pace we had before the issue are points on which we can build. We’ll look into everything we experienced this weekend, learn from it, and come back stronger for the next one."

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal

"Today’s race saw both our drivers get off the line well and deliver strong first stints. Unfortunately, we had to retire Gabriel due to a technical issue—potentially related to the fuel system—though we’ll know more once we’ve had a proper look at the car. Nico, starting from P16, pushed hard through the field. In hindsight, we may have benefited from boxing under the Virtual Safety Car, and that’s something we’ll need to analyse carefully. Despite the setbacks, the team delivered two very clean pit stops—2.2 and 2.5 seconds—which is a real credit to the crew. A lot of hard work went into this weekend, and we’ll take the lessons forward as we prepare for the European leg of the season."