• British Grand Prix

Sauber seeks qualifying boost

Kamui Kobayashi was stuck in the midfield in Valencia, finishing outside the top 10 for the first time this season © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• British Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Kamui Kobayashi
• |
• Sergio Perez

• Teams:
• Alfa Romeo

Sauber technical director James Key says that the team has developed its car to try and improve its qualifying performance at the British Grand Prix.

Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez qualified 14th and 16th respectively in Valencia, while it was 13th for Kobayashi and 17th for Pedro de la Rosa at the previous race in Canada. With the European Grand Prix also seeing the first time that Kobayashi had finished outside of the top ten, Key said that Sauber had looked in to the reasons why it hasn't challenged for a place in Q3 lately and developed the car accordingly.

"For the car we've looked a lot in detail at where we seemed to suffer some performance issues particularly during the last two events in qualifying," Key said. "We have some new directions to take in Silverstone although the track is very different from the last two we've been to. We'll be working closely on the tyres and on the set up of the car in order to extract its full potential on a single qualifying lap. We will have some developments around the diffuser and a new rear wing to test."

With Perez completing another one-stop strategy in Valencia to display how well the C30 looks after its tyres, Key said he saw the Pirelli rubber as being crucial to the race once again.

"We expect that the tyres will be key again this weekend. We have the soft and the hard tyre compound. We have to be careful with the hard tyre, because it does require a lot of warm up, although Silverstone should be as a circuit better depending on ambient conditions. With the soft tyre we are happy, it should be right as an option tyre for this circuit. Silverstone is typically quite heavy on tyres with the amount of loadings they get, and the surface of the track is quite rough and abrasive."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.