Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber tackled a packed Saturday at the Shanghai International Circuit with the Sprint and Qualifying compressed into a single day of action.

The Sprint was shaped by a long DRS train and a late-race incident involving both team cars and Jack Doohan's Alpine - though both our drivers were found blameless. The team responded with a swift turnaround to prepare the cars for qualifying.

In the afternoon session, Gabriel exited in Q1 and will line up P19 for Sunday's race. Nico advanced to Q2 and recorded the 12th fastest time, narrowly missing out on a spot in Q3 in an exceptionally close field.

Beat Zehnder, Director Signature Programs & Operations: "It was a busy day today, as it always is on a Sprint Saturday, but the team as a whole did a good job to gain performance and give us an improved chance for tomorrow's race. The morning session was challenging, as we didn't have the pace we needed to make progress, but the data we collected, both yesterday and today, allowed us to prepare better for this afternoon's Qualifying. Gabriel missed the cut to make it to his third consecutive Q2 for two and a half tenths, mostly as his warm-up lap was compromised as he ended up too close to Lewis [Hamilton]. We know the key to performance on the single lap is tyre preparation, and these conditions were not ideal for him to extract the full potential of the car, especially in such a close field. Nico, on the other hand, was agonisingly close to a place in Q3, and missed out by just 0.04s. It's always frustrating to miss out by such a small margin, but it's promising to see the improvement we have made throughout the weekend. Now we have to keep pushing, find some more performance and get ready for what is going to be an interesting race tomorrow."

Nico Hulkenberg: "That was probably close to the maximum we could achieve today. My final lap in Q2 wasn't perfect with the windy conditions causing a mini mistake in sector one, which likely cost me a shot at Q3. However, I'm pretty pleased with P12 in Quali this afternoon, as the connection with the car was the best I've had all weekend: it was a great team effort to come back from a difficult Sprint and we made some good changes to improve the car. Tomorrow is going to be a challenging race, but we've given ourselves a good chance to be in the fight."

Gabriel Bortoleto: "My first Sprint weekend continues to provide me with important learning opportunities. This morning, despite a decent starting place on the grid, we unfortunately struggled with tyre degradation and weren't able to capitalise on the good work we had done on Friday. I couldn't keep up with the pace, and the contact with Jack [Doohan] towards the end also added some car damage to the mix. We overall lacked grip compared to other competitors, which made maintaining our position challenging. Still, I've been enjoying racing on this circuit so far, and we got to learn something more that will turn useful in the race on Sunday. Qualifying has been a frustrating one for me: I got caught in traffic on the outlap, which ended up compromising my final push attempt. It's a shame, because the car had been feeling good, and we had been making progress - we could realistically have had a shot at Q2. But that's qualifying - sometimes things just don't fall into place. The focus now is on tomorrow, making the most of what we've learned today, and fighting for every position in the race."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai here.