Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

Sauber cautious over development spend

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn admits the team faces tough choices about how much car development to allocate valuable resources to.

The majority of teams will be bringing major update packages to Barcelona for the start of the European season, but Kaltenborn concedes that won’t be the case for Sauber. Speaking to F1i about the planned new parts for the next race, Kaltenborn says part of the package is already on the car but hopes the true performance gain will be seen when the rest of the upgrade is introduced.

“We’ve got a few things already earlier on from that package,” Kaltenborn said. “Maybe you couldn’t see the full potential because it was all planned to come for Barcelona, so let’s hope although we raced some things that you see more potential from that in Barcelona. Then we’ll see how things go and decide what we bring there and what we don’t. We have our own programme, and we’ll follow that.”

And Kaltenborn admits the financial situation the team has been facing over the past 12 months means it has to carefully monitor what it spends on car development.

“We have to remain flexible in the situation we are. You see when you reach the point where it’s the right ratio between the cost and the benefit you get, and that’s the same principle we’ll be using to do our development.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.