Sauber's Kaltenborn praises ‘super strategist’ for P8

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn heaped praise on strategist Ruth Buscombe after Pascal Wehrlein secured the team's first points of the season in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Wehrlein started from 15th on the grid but an aggressive one-stop strategy saw him run a long first stint to run in seventh position. Sauber was then able to pit during a Virtual Safety Car [VSC] period and retain that place and Wehrlein held off Carlos Sainz to the flag before dropping a place due to a five-second time penalty.

With Buscombe having joined Sauber following a number of high-profile strategic calls for Haas at the start of last season, Kaltenborn was keen to highlight the strategist's contribution to the result.

"That was a super day!" Kaltenborn told RACER. "We had a super strategy. We have a super strategist. It's about super girls in this team!

"Friday was quite depressing but we're used to such moments and we know we can still focus in spite of all our difficulties and that was very important. We knew that the strategy that was suggested was a risky one but you need everyone to work to that, particularly the drivers, they need the calls made in the right way. It was a bit sad that the call on Pascal was maybe a little bit too late but fine, it doesn't matter now, we're happy with where we are.

"Both drivers had a very good race and I think if we did not have an issue on Marcus' car with the brake-by-wire system – and we need to investigate that still – we could have probably had both cars in the points."

Asked if Buscombe had been recruited for her potential to execute risky strategies despite the car lacking pace, Kaltenborn replied: "No, we got her in because she's a very good engineer.

"Just being risky is not the only factor of being good, you have to make the right call, irrespective of being risky or not. That's what she convinced us about."

Wehrlein's time penalty was handed out as a result of a late call to pit when the VSC was deployed, with the Mercedes youngster ignoring a bollard at the pit entry. With a train formed behind the Sauber after the stop, Kaltenborn admits it looked like the infringement could cost Wehrlein his top ten finish at that stage.

"We thought we could lose all the points because at that time he was out of the points, he was P11. Of course we knew we had a couple of laps to go but we were certainly very anxious about the fact that he could have dropped out of the points.

"It would have been devastating, we're talking about P7 here and then being P11! But when we told him he also drove very consistently and then knowing him he tried even more to keep his place, but let's say the damage from the penalty was minimum and that's the best."