Sauber does not believe Sergio Perez had a realistic chance of beating Lewis Hamilton to victory in the Italian Grand Prix - despite him finishing less than five seconds behind at the checkered flag.
Perez executed a brilliant alternative strategy to the leaders to charge through to second from 12th place on the grid – even overtaking Ferrari duo Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso on the way. But although he came close to Hamilton in the closing stages, Sauber CEO Monisha Kaltenborn says her team is not wasting any time wondering if even more would have been possible.
"I think we were too far away from that, and that is speculation that you don't want to get into," she said. "With the laps we had remaining we were too far away.
"Even if you start thinking: what if we had more laps? Well, if you have more laps you also have more laps where things can go wrong, so we should not forget that."
Kaltenborn said it had been a tough call to opt to start the race on the hard tires; but the team quickly realized that its strategy was correct once Perez hit the right pit stop window.
"It was very tight," she said. "The engineers had actually calculated the window that you have to look at, and that is what you have to decide: do we go for a one-stop or a two-stopper? And it was a very tricky decision."