Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has said that the team is not rushing into a decision about its driver line-up for next season, and that the fight between its reserve drivers is still very open.
Last week, Russian youngster Sergey Sirotkin said that his fellow Sauber reserve driver Simona de Silvestro was merely a “marketing move”, and that he did not consider her to be a threat for a seat at the team. Kaltenborn explained how the plan to get Sirotkin into F1 remains, but she said that there were a couple of options for the team in 2015.
“We have a couple of options and we’ll see when the time is there,” she said. “We have said that it’s our intention with the ones we have on board right now, particularly Sergey, who we are preparing on his way into Formula 1.
“He needs to focus on what he’s doing now, and he did a good job in Moscow, he won the race, so that’s continuing. We’re not in any hurry there.”
de Silvestro left IndyCar at the end of last season to join Sauber as an affiliate driver, and she is looking to make the step up to F1 in the near future. Earlier this week, it was confirmed that she would be testing in Austin, with the Circuit of the Americas becoming her official testing partner.
Kaltenborn was pleased with how de Silvestro fared at her last test in Valencia, saying: “It went very well actually, she covered 1200km, and she did a very good job.”
For the time being, the fight for the seats at Sauber remains open. Test driver Giedo van der Garde will also be hoping to stake his claim for a full-time seat, meaning that neither of the full-time drivers – Esteban Gutierrez and Adrian Sutil – can be certain of their F1 future.
Sirotkin will hope to keep up his good form in Formula Renault 3.5, but to say that de Silvestro is merely a “marketing move” would be to underestimate her position and ability.