Wehrlein: My target is to be in a team where I can win

Pascal Wehrlein is somewhat off the radar as he toils at the wrong end of the field in his second year of Formula 1, this year at Sauber he has scored points twice for the Swiss team and still dreams of one day winning races with a big team.

The Mercedes junior driver told the official F1 site, "My target is to one day be in a team where I can win races, get on the podium regularly and fight for championships. Right now I don’t have these tools to make it happen."

"The weekends where we score points are very, very special for us because we don’t have the car to finish in the top ten often – only if the stars are in the right place!"

"And then we have to take the opportunity and bag the points. I am very happy that when the chance was there I was able to grab it. I want to be there when it counts."

Wehrlein admits that he does not know what 2018 holds for him and accepts that right now a drive for his backers, Mercedes, is not something he thinks about, "I have no idea what is happening next year. Of course, I have heard all these rumours as well."

"I cannot influence such a decision, so worrying about things that you cannot influence is wasting your time and wasting your strength and efforts. Yes, Valtteri is doing a good job and he deserves it."

As for his second season at the pinnacle of the sport, Wehrlein was honest in his summary, "It is no secret that my start to the season was very difficult. The injury matter was pretty tough. Going to Australia and not driving was hard and having to skip China was another notch on the horror scale."

The start to 2017 in Bahrain was not bad. It felt like I had never been away, never been injured. The first qualifying took me to Q2 and I nearly finished in the points with P11- with the Sauber car! Since then it is going smoothly and pretty much in the right direction."

"Twice I scored points, with the clear highlight of Barcelona, which was exceptional for us finishing in P7 - even if with the penalty it was finally P8. But imagine: P7 with the Sauber!"

"Yes there have been difficult races since then, but we knew that this would happen," revealed the 22 year old, whose points scorning means that Sauber lies ahead of McLaren in the championship standings.