Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

Nasr buoyed by new race engineer

Felipe Nasr says his change of race engineer "was a lot easier" than he expected after making a change at the Russian Grand Prix.

Nasr changed his race engineer from Craig Gardner to Paul Russell in Sochi and duly went on to finish sixth in a chaotic race a fortnight ago. Having worked with Russell during pre-season testing, Nasr says it was encouraging to start with such a strong result and he hopes to see further improvements in the remaining four races.

“I think we got on well together from the first moment we had the car on track," Nasr said. "I think we got ourselves communicating quite well and I was happy with the how the weekend went in Sochi.

"It was very straightforward, Paul got in to the rhythm very quick, and he was back in winter testing at the beginning of the year so it was not like I didn’t know him. I already had some relationship with him so it was a lot easier than we imagined.”

And Nasr says having a good relationship with his new race engineer adds to his confidence when he's in the car on track.

“Yeah, it was a mutual decision and of course all I want from an engineer is to have the same language and have this connection between driver and engineer. You both have to speak in the same language, you have to try and translate these things for the engineer to give the proper feedback.

"I was really happy with how things went in Sochi and I want to keep on going like this in the last few races we have this year to finish on a high.”

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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.