Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

New Sauber ‘a good step’ forward

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Felipe Nasr believes the new Sauber is “a good step” forward for the team after the team was second fastest again at Jerez.

Marcus Ericsson was second to Sebastian Vettel on the opening day of pre-season testing and Nasr matched that result on his first day driving for Sauber. Having not tested the old car due to commitments with Williams, Nasr said the C34 appeared to be a clear improvement on the 2014 Sauber.

“It’s a good step from what I saw from last year,” Nasr said. “We’ve definitely done a step forward on the car and I think it’s a combination of chassis and engine. So I’m looking forward to seeing how much we can develop on that. Tomorrow is still another long day to get in to those details.”

Having completed over 80 laps on the second day of testing, Nasr said he was pleased with the reliability of the Ferrari engine, which he says doesn’t feel noticeably weaker than the Mercedes of last year.

“That’s another positive. In the two days Marcus didn’t have any problems and today we didn’t have any major issues, so we were able to go through our program so everything was fine.”

Click here for the gallery of the second day of testing at Jerez

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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.