After a difficult start to the season, Esteban Gutierrez is not expecting any quick fix at Sauber as both he and teammate Adrian Sutil continue to struggle with the C33 car.
The team is yet to score any points in 2014, and currently sits behind minnows Marussia in the constructors’ championship. In a media session today at Silverstone, Gutierrez was honest about the team’s current state.
“I have to say, at the moment, it cannot be worse,” he said. “We can only go for better things and this is what we have to keep ourselves working [towards]. We have no other options at the moment.”
The best thing about the car? “It’s very strong so when I crashed in the wall in Montreal it broke the chassis!” he joked.
In 2013, Sauber enjoyed an upturn in fortunes towards the end of the year, but Gutierrez is not expecting a repeat in 2014.
“To be honest we cannot fall down into that thought, because last year was pretty special,” he explained. “First of all, the tires were changed. Secondly, aerodynamically, we had something that we found pretty unusual which normally doesn’t happen.
“This year it’s not really the case. We are not really far off to the expectations from the wind tunnel, this kind of thing, so there’s not really something that’s going to change the whole situation.
“And we have to be truthful to ourselves that we cannot just sit and hope that things are going to change like last year. At the moment, we are working a lot to try to find a few tenths, but it’s not going to be one second or even half a second.
“Obviously with some of the parts we can bring, aerodynamically, [it] will be a boost, but apart from that it’s not going to be huge.”
Gutierrez heads into this weekend’s British Grand Prix with a ten place grid penalty for an unsafe release during the Austrian Grand Prix.
