Kamui Kobayashi has faith in the new Sauber C31 for the upcoming 2012 season – Formula 1
Kamui Kobayashi has said that glitches with the latest edition of the Sauber car are not a big deal.
Sauber introduced their 2012 challenger on the first day of the first pre-season test and had no trouble at all. The car ran with good pace and reliability but on the second and the third day the team found some technical glitches which caused them to lose mileage.
However, Kobayashi has downplayed the technical difficulties and has stated that it is common for a new car to have trouble in the initial stages.
“This is just four days with the new car, problems happen sometimes. It's a new car. This is why we are here,” he said. “We need to get lots of mileage and investigate problems. We had a couple of problems and we have to improve that. The mileage for four days is quite a lot so this is quite natural stuff.”
“In my first season in 2010, we hardly had any problems in the winter, but once we started the races we had big problems. Compared to that, I think we are in good shape. We just had a couple of troubles and we just have to understand that,” he added.
He said that the C31 has still requires tweaking before it can be ready for the upcoming season. Sauber had a poor run in 2011 and are looking to improve on that showing. The team has said that the car still needs some performance work and yet it felt really good. The potential is definitely there for the team to really show that they can compete with the midfield teams if not higher.
The aerodynamics numbers also require some looking into and with small changes to the car, it is going to be fairly strong development for the car. The season will begin on March 18th 2012 with the Australian Grand Prix as the opening race.
There are still to more pre-season tests left and those will give a clearer picture of where Sauber’s C31 stands among other cars on the grid. The second test is scheduled to begin on February 21, 2012.
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