Gearbox failure thwarts Ericsson's alternative strategy

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Sauber's Marcus Ericsson and his team mate Pascal Wehrlein were the only drivers to attempt a one-stop strategy in Bahrain.

But while the approach put Wehrlein within a whisker of a top finish, Ericsson's hopes were dashed by a late retirement with seven laps to go.

"The start was good," Ericsson said. "I was the only driver on soft tyres, but I was able to follow the queue quite well.

"The safety car phase came at a bad time for us," he noted. "At the re-start I was in P8, however, the other cars on fresh tyres were able to overtake me.

Ericsson finally made his one and only stop on lap 33 from 15th position.

"After boxing for the supersoft tyres, the lap times were looking good," he reported. "But I was too far off to catch up with the cars in front of me."

Then on lap 50 Ericsson was forced to pull over to the side of the track and retire from the race.

"In the end, I had a gearbox failure, which forced me to stop the car on track," he confirmed. "It was a disappointing race."

Wehrlein happy with his first race back at Sauber

"We knew it would have been a difficult race," commented Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn.

"We decided beforehand to choose different strategies in order to benefit from a one-stop-strategy.

"Marcus was the only driver starting on soft tyres," she added. "Unfortunately, he was not able to finish the race due to a gearbox failure just a couple of laps before the chequered flag."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.