Pascal Wehrlein believes the lack of pace in his Sauber car meant he was unable to show his talent to other teams and ultimately cost him his place on the Formula 1 grid.
The German scored all of the Swiss team’s points in 2017, however, using a year-old Ferrari engine, would rarely move up from the back of the grid as the power deficit and delays in chassis upgrades saw Sauber fall off the midfield battle.
That meant, even when he drove well, Wehrlein’s results were still no better than on a bad day and therefore, they went unnoticed.
“Even if we had a good race in the second half of the season, you couldn’t see it as the gap was too big,” he claimed. “For example at Suzuka, I was lapped by the second last guy. What can you do there?”
Twice the former DTM champion would score points, using a clever strategy to claim eighth in Spain as well as emerging from the mayhem in Baku with the final point in 10th, but Pascal doesn’t think they were his actual best races..
“In terms of the result it was the best race of the year,” he said of the Barcelona race. “[We] scored five points when we could score points, that’s important but probably in the second half of the season I had better races but you couldn’t see it.
“Malaysia was one of them, we were close to Q2 and the race was quite good,” he continued. “[Brazil] was quite good in terms of performance. There we were not so far from Q2 I think, just one or two tenths.”
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Wehrlein’s future at Sauber was always doubtful, after arriving as a last resort following the collapse of Manor at the start of the year, so it was no surprise when it was confirmed he would be leaving and Ferrari junior Charles Leclerc would be arriving as part of the new Alfa Romeo partnership.
During the year, however, the 23-year-old was put in a difficult situation with claims his teammate Marcus Ericsson was being favoured due to his association with owners Longbow Finance.
Though he wouldn’t talk about those claims directly, Wehrlein insisted he was always giving 100% while at Sauber.
“I was always giving my best. I think that’s the most important thing you can say about yourself. When the opportunity was there we took it,” he said.
“You can always do things better. With more experience you think, ‘Ahh, one or two races ago I was doing this direction with the set-up. Now I know this was worse, I should have gone in this direction’.
“You always learn something,” he added. “But I can definitely say I was always giving my best.”
