Sauber not happy with Imola performance

Peter Sauber was less than happy with his team's performance at the first 'normal' race of the year, after his drivers finished a disappointing 10th and 11th. His Ferrari engined C22 proved its reliability, apart from one glitch in practice when Heinz-Harald Frentzen suffered a blow-up, but the speed was just not there on the day

Apr 20, 2003, 4:40 PM

"We are not surprised by the result of this race, but obviously we cannot be satisfied with it," said Sauber. "It was the first regular race of the season and it showed the limitations of the C22."

Tenth place finisher Nick Heidfeld said: "It's never enjoyable to finish a race but not to score points. I made a good start but then I got pushed onto the grass by one of the BARs and lost a couple of places.

"After that I had the choice of a two or three stop strategy and we chose three even though we knew the chances of getting blocked were higher. Unfortunately I did get blocked quite a bit, so that was it."

Team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen said: "We did our best today and I think we got the best out of the car. It is very reliable but we need the things we have in the pipeline to improve it further."