How Sauber starred at Monza

Nico Hulkenberg's drive to fifth place the Italian Grand Prix from third on the grid was a superb effort from the man behind the wheel, but it would have been impossible had the Sauber not been significantly more competitive at Monza than has generally been the case throughout 2013.

The ultra-low downforce configuration of Monza certainly played its part. But while head of trackside engineering Tom McCullough accepts that, he also points to a recent upward trend at Monza.

He does not anticipate such strong weekends ahead, but does expect an improved end to the season for the Swiss squad.

"It's a bit of both," he said when asked whether what happened at Monza was thanks to the car improving or the circuit characteristics.

"Since Budapest, where we put the update package on the car, we saw it was working better but not always getting the results we wanted."

A glance at Sauber's relative pace shows that, while Spa and Monza are its peaks of performance, the Swiss team is gaining ground.

This graph shows the raw pace of the Sauber at each race of the 2013 season, expressed as a percentage of the outright fastest time. These figures are based upon taking each team's quickest single lap of each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest.

With such small margins separating the mid-Q2 cars and those making the top 10, it does not require a huge swing to turn a car from no-hoper into points-contender.

"It's such a tight part of the grid," said McCullough. "One or two tenths here or there can put you into very different places on the grid and then, bang, you can race. At the higher-downforce circuits, we don't expect to be quite as competitive.

Tom McCullough © XPB

"But Monza fundamentally has six braking zones, so it's very different to Singapore. A driver can have a good influence on things like that as well.

"We're not expecting to be challenging for positions like this. We are realistic, there are circumstances in qualifying, but we still have new bits coming and are pushing.

"We have a new update package for Singapore and some more bits for Suzuka. When you can see the car starting to work better and you can see gains are possible, you have to keep chipping away at it. We have got to take the race to Toro Rosso ahead of us in the championship."

Sauber is still 14 points behind Toro Rosso in that particular battle, but how exactly did it pull off that fifth place at Monza?

QUALIFYING

Qualifying was clearly the key. Hulkenberg had a good, clean run throughout all three sessions. In Q1, he was 10th, lapping at 1m24.776s, following that up with fifth in Q2, improving by 0.471s.

In Q3, he found another 0.240s, with only Felipe Massa and Mark Webber able to make a bigger improvement. The average step from Q2 to Q3 was 0.179s (excluding Jean-Eric Vergne who had a lurid trip through the Parabolica gravel), which would have given him less of a cushion over the Ferraris. It also allowed him to move ahead of Alonso and came without the aid of a tow.

Had he only made the average step produced by the nine cars that set proper lap times (Vergne's was 3.5 seconds slower thanks to that ride through the gravel), he would have been fifth behind both Ferraris.

IMPROVEMENT Q2 TO Q3
1 Felipe Massa, -0.347s
2 Mark Webber, -0.295s
3 Nico Hulkenberg, -0.240s
4 Sebastian Vettel, -0.222s
5 Nico Rosberg, -0.201s
6 Sergio Perez, -0.090s
7 Fernando Alonso, -0.085s
8 Daniel Ricciardo, -0.081s
9 Jenson Button, -0.048s
10 Jean-Eric Vergne, +3.475

Hulkenberg's grid position was boosted by others having trouble. Lewis Hamilton certainly had the speed to be ahead had he escaped Q2, while the race pace of the Lotus-Renaults suggested there was an untapped vein of speed that the team could not exploit on Saturday. Either way, it was an impressive performance.

Hulkenberg put the Sauber third on the grid © LAT

"Finishing qualy two, there was some debate as to whether we should put a new option tyre on," explains McCullough.

"Before, we'd have said if we can't really make progress in Q2 we would have to think of the race or maybe go prime, like the team did with Perez [who finished second] last year.

"But we saw how close we were, asked the driver and he said there was another tenth or tenth-and-a-half in it, so you have to give it a shot.

"He executed a great qualy lap while a few other people had mistakes."

THE START

The first few seconds of the race were always going to be make or break. It came very close to being the latter as Hulkenberg had a poor launch.

"The clutch was a bit inconsistent and a little bit too much torque initially which set me off with some wheelspin and that made it difficult," said Hulkenberg.

"I had Fernando around the outside of Turn 1 and I was half next to Mark but he didn't see me and turned in so I had to pull out to avoid a crash, otherwise I could have recovered Fernando's position."

Watch the replay of the start and you can see how good a job Hulkenberg did. Having moved over to make it harder for Rosberg to get past him, Hulkenberg capitalised on the fact Vettel locked up into the first corner, creating some hesitation among the Ferraris, to jink to the outside and go around both Alonso and Webber.

As Hulkenberg claims, he did have his car up the inside of Webber, although he was never going to have the space to get through and avoided getting sucked into trying to monster the kerbs too much, which would have led to a collision.

The Sauber driver recovered well from a slow start © LAT

As he had to crawl around a tight line, Alonso swept past him, but considering the launch he had, being a clear fifth was a reasonable result and laid the foundations for his result.

STINT 1

During the first stint of the race, Hulkenberg comfortably held fifth place and kept Rosberg at arm's length. By the time he headed for the pits at the end of lap 24 he was, in effect, around 13 seconds off de facto race leader Sebastian Vettel.

Having lost two places at the start, the objective was to hold fifth. But even with Rosberg on his tail, Hulkenberg looked untroubled.

"We wanted to get to the first corner at least maintaining position and we were fifth," says McCullough. "From a strategy and race point of view, you can defend here if you are quick in the right places and look after the tyres right.

"Nico just took the reward of his job in qualifying, very much like his first Italian Grand Prix in 2010 with Williams [when he finished seventh from eighth on the grid].

"As long as you can get into that position and drive around in the right places, it works. The Mercedes was quicker, but Nico didn't put a foot wrong."

With Ricciardo's Toro Rosso creating a roadblock behind, Hulkenberg was as good as guaranteed at least sixth place by the end of his first stint, but the big challenge was dealing with Rosberg.

PITSTOP

The pitstop was always going to be key given that, as a rule, Sauber's crew is slower than Mercedes'.

Hulkenberg stopped at the end of lap 24 with Rosberg still sat a fraction over a second behind him. Hulkenberg made his only significant error of the race, locking up under braking for the first chicane after leaving the pits as he tried to keep the Williams of Valtteri Bottas behind him. In the end he comfortably stayed ahead.

Rosberg completed two more laps, but on his old medium-compound tyres he didn't have the pace to capitalise on the fact he spent just under 1.5 seconds less in the pitlane than Hulkenberg did.

FINAL STINT

Effectively, little had changed for Hulkenberg: he still had Rosberg to worry about, but with the top four a decent margin ahead he had little else to focus on.

But there were two curveballs. The first, the presence of Raikkonen ahead of him until the end of lap 30, was a minor inconvenience. This was as a result of the Lotus driver pitting at the end of lap one after suffering front wing damage and being out of sync.

Hulkenberg held off Rosberg in the end © LAT

Lewis Hamilton was more of a nuisance. The Brit was behind Hulkenberg when Raikkonen pulled in, and Hulkenberg knew that the Mercedes driver was due to stop again. This was thanks to Hamilton suffering a slow puncture during his first stint and being on a two-stop strategy.

The German did defend, but on lap 32 had to run deep into the first chicane, allowing Hamilton to have a run on him and pass through Curve Grande. Not that it mattered - what really matted was that he lost little time to the man he was really racing, Rosberg.

"I knew," said Hulkenberg when asked whether he realised Hamilton had to stop again. "I was trying to keep him behind but he was too quick on the straight so I had no chance.

"But that was good in hindsight. I was lucky he was past so I could get on with my race and not waste much time keeping him behind. Once he got past, it was the other Mercedes again so there was never time to breathe."

Even with Rosberg on his tail for another 20-odd laps, save for a brief moment's peace when the Mercedes straightlined the first chicane, Hulkenberg was never seriously threatened. It was not as if Rosberg didn't have an incentive. As he was told over the radio, he had the pace to trouble the podium finishers had he been able to get past.

As McCullough explains, Hulkenberg's precise driving ensured there was never a danger of this happening.

"Nico's management of the tyres was really good in this race," said McCullough. "He just kept it quick in all the right places.

"As long as you don't make mistakes and keep it quick in the right places, get off Parabolica well every time, don't make mistakes in Turns 1 and 2 and are on similar tyre age, then the job's done."

As Hulkenberg put it, "it was fairly safe" and he was rewarded with his best finish of the season. With potential employers watching, it was a timely reminder of his ability.

Most satisfying for the team was that Hulkenberg was 15.531s behind Vettel after the stops. At the finish, he was only 10.355 down. Even when you take into account the fact Vettel dropped two seconds on the last lap and was controlling the race and battling a gearbox problem, that's testament to Sauber's progress.

With a few more laps, he might even have threatened Massa as he was within DRS range of the Brazilian at the end of the final lap.

The question is could he have finished even higher had he come out of Turn 1 third or fourth? Possibly, but the Sauber seemed to get relatively stronger as the fuel loads decreased, suggesting that Webber and Alonso would probably have been able to get past him in the first stint, even though he probably had the speed to keep them at bay had he emerged from the pitstops in front.

Either way, it was a fine performance from driver and team. The next race in Singapore is going to be harder, but it's to the Swiss squad's credit that it has been able to salvage something from a season that, at one stage, seemed doomed.