Europe: No surprises from Peter Sauber

Peter Sauber Talks
By Phil Huff (27/06/2003)
June 27 2003

The FIA's Friday press conference took place at the Nurburgring today, and Sauber Petronas boss Peter Sauber was in attendance. Here's what they had to say...

Q: Peter, are you pretty much in the market for an engine?

Peter Sauber: Generally we are happy with the situation we have now with Ferrari. We have worked together now for seven years but of course we have to look for other possibilities but at the moment there is only one: Mercedes.

Q: When it comes to Ferrari, you've had quite a few problems over the last few races. You've had a few blow-ups, what's been happening? It's been a very reliable engine in the past, why not now?

PS: I don't know. It's necessary to look very carefully at the situation we have now, but when we see it for the last five or six years, I think we are in a very comfortable situation with the Ferrari engines. Overall, the engine has been very, very reliable.

Q: What sort of explanation has Ferrari given you?

PS: At the moment, it's really not clear what the problem is.

Q: So it's not really to your satisfaction because you haven't actually tied it up? PS: No.

Q: What about from a general chassis point of view? I understand you may be using another wind tunnel. Do you want to speed up development?

PS: Our biggest problem at the moment is the aerodynamics, of course, and we're working very, very hard on this problem. We have an old wind tunnel, it's for sure not a bad one, but it's not a state-of-the-art wind tunnel and our own wind tunnel is ready for use at the end of this year, that's late. Maybe we will use another wind tunnel in England for a short period to look for a comparison between the wind tunnel in Emmen and an English one.

Q: After what we have seen in this afternoon's qualifying, what sort of changes would you like to see next year?

PS: I believe the qualifying is okay, the Friday qualifying and also the Saturday qualifying.

Q: How do you rate Nick Heidfeld's performance so far and what about his future in the team?

PS: About Nick? It is too early to speak about drivers. I am happy with both drivers; they have done a good job. It is not easy for the drivers at the moment because the performance of the car is not good enough.