2014 Season Review: Sauber

The 2014 season saw the Sauber team slip to tenth place from seventh place in the Constructors Championship. The 2013 season saw the Sauber team clinch seventh place in the Constructors Championship in front of their rivals Toro Rosso, Williams, Marussia and Caterham.

The Swiss-based outfit only picked up seven points in the opening ten rounds of the 2013 championship but an improvement of form in the second-half of the season saw former driver Nico Hülkenberg pick up fifty points pushing Sauber into seventh in the constructors' championship.

Their improved performance on the circuit in the second half of the 2013 season was mainly due to the change in tyre specification prior to the German Grand Prix after several tyre failures and explosions took place at Silverstone raising safety concerns with the Pirelli tyre compounds and structures.

As well as experiencing issues on the track, financial troubles surrounded Sauber for the majority of the 2013 season which impacted which drivers they would sign for this season. Sauber was dealt a massive blow when former driver Nico Hülkenberg left the team for fellow midfield runners Force India whilst Esteban Gutierrez was retained. Sauber then announced Adrian Sutil was announced as their second driver this season who would partner Gutierrez.

Sutil had spent all his career in Formula One at Spyker/Force India meaning this was the first time he had driven for a team that was not based at Silverstone. Gutierrez struggled to perform in 2013 and this was often qualifying on average one second behind teammate Nico Hülkenberg thus had a lot to prove going into 2014.

Looking at the team's results this year, it is hard to imagine four podium finishes just two years ago with former drivers Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi. Even at the start of pre-season testing, Sauber appeared slow in testing and also the Ferrari 059/3 V6 Turbo power unit did not perform as well as they would have hoped.

The pre-season tests of Jerez and Bahrain couldn't reveal too much about the true performance respective to the rest of the field but it was reported that the C33 was close to 20kg overweight which would've hampered the speed and fuelled the driver weight debate which was a popular criticism of the regulations at the start of the year.

Going into the new season, perhaps Australia was the best chance for struggling teams to collect points as pre-season testing showed that the reliability across the field was very doubtful. Sauber finished 11th and 12th in Melbourne after Ricciardo's disqualification as cars retired left and right. There were 13 finishers with Chilton the only one behind the two Saubers which was not the start to the season they would have wanted.

In the next 5 races of the season, the Sauber team had 7 retirements and with the first opportunity for teams to bring major upgrades is the Spanish GP, Sauber needed to improve. However, a sixteenth and seventeenth place finishes in Spain showed that they needed a miracle to finish in the top 10 any time soon.

The next race in Monaco turned out to be the season defining moment for the teams at the back of the grid. Gutierrez and Sutil qualified 17thand 18th and retired from accidents in the race. With their rivals Marussia scoring their first ever points in Formula One with an ninth place finish, this saw the team being relegated to 10th in the constructor's championship behind Marussia.

With Sauber's Team Principal Monisha Kaltenborn admitting shortly after the race in Monaco that it would be difficult to score points afterwards. The next opportunity for Sauber to try and score some points was in Hungary, where a rain and safety car affected race shuffled the pack and Sutil ended in P11 who was less than a second away from Jenson Button's McLaren.

The reliability of the Sauber had improved after the summer break and the weight of the car had been reduced, but this was not unique and the pace and performance still wasn't there in the C33. During the final seven races of the season, Sauber never finished higher than thirteenth place with either driver.

2014 will be a tough situation for Sauber to bounce back from. Sauber weren't just poor this year, in my opinion Sauber were just anonymous. The TV cameras didn't show them unless there were in an accident or incident on the track nor were they fighting for anything either.

In qualifying, it was a formality for one or both drivers to be eliminated in Q1. It was impressive when Sutil qualified in ninth place in Austin, but he retired in the first lap collision with Perez and nothing became of it. Even if the car was competitive (which it was not), their pit crew were losing up to a second per stop in comparison to the likes of Lotus and McLaren.

This season with their driver line up of Sutil and Gutierrez saw not only Sauber slipping three places down the Constructors standings to tenth place but also the team failed to score any points since their debut in the sport in 1993. And this is hard to believe given that Sauber are known for being the 'underdogs' who will challenge hard to score points in a season and it is a real shame for the small Swiss team who many pundits and fans have a small soft spot for in their hearts; no matter what team they support on the grid.

Adrian Sutil 0 points/ 18th in the Driver's Championship

With Sauber already announcing their 2015 driver line-up which consists of former Caterham driver Marcus Ericsson and Williams test driver and GP2 title contender, Felipe Nasr, we have seen quite possibly seen Sutil completing his final year in the sport with the Sauber team this season.

Sutil never had the car beneath him to be able to shine this season. Even though it was expected that Sutil would outperform and out-qualify his younger team mate, Gutierrez has challenged him throughout the season with both drivers equal with nine times each on qualifying performance and also finishing races too with five races each.

Sutil started the first half of the season with an eleventh place finish in Australia and retirements in Malaysia, Bahrain and China. With the Sauber team bringing some improvements to the Spanish Grand Prix, Sutil still struggled to extract pace and performance from the car and could only finish in seventeenth place.

In the next race in Monaco, Sutil retired from the race when their rivals Marussia scored their first points in Formula One and also Jules Bianchi's with a ninth place finish. Before the summer break, Sutil managed to achieve three consecutive thirteenth place finishes in Canada, Austria and Silverstone, while retiring at his home Grand Prix in German and in Hungary, Sutil finished in eleventh place, just one second behind Jenson Button's McLaren and out of the points once again.

In the second half of the season, Sutil showed signs of improvement, but not enough to score some much needed points for himself and his team. Sutil finished in fourteenth place at Spa, a fifteenth place finish in Monza and retired in Singapore. Sutil finished in twenty-first place in Japan, an sixteenth place finish in Sochi and his first lap collision with Perez in Austin proved to be an costly accident that saw him retire from the race and the last chance of him scoring points for Sauber was gone.

Even though Sutil did a credible job to qualify in ninth place with the C33 with Vettel out of the equation starting from the pit lane, he wasn't to blame for retiring from the race. In the last two races of the season, Sutil achieved two sixteenth places in Brazil and Abu Dhabi with no points to his name.

In a season that has been lacklustre, Sutil has managed to give the Sauber team their best finish of the season by finishing in eleventh place twice in Australia and Hungary compared than Gutierrez's best finish which is a twelfth place in Australia. But Sutil overall this season hasn't consistently outperformed Gutierrez as we all expected that he would and has had a season plagued by reliability and mistakes but has still managed to get the upper-hand come Sunday afternoons when it matters in the race.

Esteban Gutierrez 0 points / 20th in Driver's Championship

This season could also see Gutierrez completing his final year in Formula One after yet another disappointing season with the Sauber team. Many pundits and fans hoped that the second season would help him progress as a driver. And I will state this to be fair to Gutierrez, he hasn't done a lot wrong, he just isn't very quick in comparison to most F1 drivers.

As a result of this, it is very difficult to dissect just what Gutierrez has achieved in his second season in the sport. As with Sutil, Gutierrez never had the car beneath him to be able to shine this season. Even though it was expected that Sutil would outperform and out-qualify him, Gutierrez has actually challenged him throughout the season with both drivers equal with nine times each on qualifying performance and also finishing races too with five races each.

At the season opener in Australia, Guiterrez scored his best finish of the season with a twelfth place finish behind his team mate. In the next few races of the season, Gutierrez was taken out at the Bahrain Grand Prix by Pastor Maldonado followed by two consecutive sixteenth places at Sakhir and Shanghai.

He was set to score the Sauber's first points of the season at Monaco, however he made a mistake at Rascasse which forced him to retire from the race. As we headed into the summer break, Gutierrez finished in fourteenth place in Canada and Germany, nineteenth place in Austria and retired at both Silverstone and Hungary.

As we headed into the second half of the season, Gutierrez continued to struggle to extract pace and performance from the car while Sutil at least attempted to try and get Sauber into a position to try and score points. Gutierrez finished in fifteenth place in Belgium once again behind his team mate, finished in twentieth place in Italy, retired in Singapore and finished in thirteenth place in Japan.

In the final four races of the season, Gutierrez finished ahead of Sutil in Sochi and Austin with a fifteenth place finish and a fourteenth place finish, however, Sutil did manage in Austin let us remember to qualify in ninth place and could have challenged for points if not for his incident on the first lap with Sergio Perez. In Brazil and Abu Dhabi, he finished in fourteenth and fifteenth places with no points to his tally this season.

In a season that has been disappointing, Gutierrez has not managed to give the Sauber team their best finish of the season by finishing in twelfth place in Australia compared to Sutil's best finish which is two eleventh places in Australia and Hungary.

But Guiterrez overall this season has been beaten in races by Sutil as many would expect him too. However, he has been able to challenge him in qualifying which shows that he has maybe shown a small improvement in his performances from his rookie season in the sport last year, but it hasn't been enough to retain his seat with the Sauber team for the 2015 season.

In conclusion, due to the poor performance of the C33, it is difficult to assess the performances of both Sutil and Gutierrez in terms of results however in comparison to each other as it has been fairly close between them.

I believe that even though Sutil has been challenged in qualifying by his team mate, he has shown that he can deliver where it matters which on the track in the race on a Sunday. Sutil has been the only driver for Sauber who has at least attempted to try and get them into a position to score points. But ultimately, he hasn't been able to convert these opportunities when it mattered (for example Austin) and this has been a key factor I believe in Sauber not retaining his services for next season despite having a contract underneath him.

Meanwhile, Gutierrez may have challenged Sutil on the track in qualifying but he could not translate this into race performances on a Sunday. Just like Sutil, he also had a chance to try and challenge for points for Sauber in Monaco but did not take the opportunity and had to retire from the race.

To put it simply; Gutierrez may have improved a little bit from his first season in the sport, but not enough to secure his drive with the Sauber team next season. He is out of a drive for the meantime, he does have good financial backing from his sponsor Telmex.

So it would make sense to me for Gutierrez to secure a test drive somewhere within the grid looks like it could be the only way to keep his foot in the door and try to regain a race seat back into the sport in the near future. Gutierrez does have two years experience underneath him which could prove very handy if he gains a test drive with another team on the grid and also the chance to develop as a driver further in a new environment.

But what to expect from Sauber in 2015? It will be hard for them to improve next year. Their 10th place (or 9th if Marussia are excluded) doesn't receive a lot of prize money and their driver line up isn't exactly a proven improvement, even if Ericsson bring a year's experience with him from Caterham and Nasr showing that he has the talent to perform after a good year in GP2.

But for me personally, there are no inclinations or signs that Sauber will improve from 9th or 10th in 2015, even if many pundits and fans like myself hope that they can at least try with all their might to improve one or two places up the pecking order of the Constructors Championship, it could be a very difficult and long road ahead to see Sauber back in the midfield where they truly and deservedly belong.

Sarah Jones