BMW reassign chief designer Zander

BMW Sauber have reassigned their chief designer Jorg Zander from the chassis department in Hinwil to BMW's powertrain factory in Munich in a bid to resolve their reliability problems

"I was not entirely happy with division of labour there and since Jorg Zander brought with him quite a lot of experience with powertrains, we felt we should use his knowledge," said team boss Mario Theissen.

Issues with the F1.07's gearbox disrupted BMW's otherwise promising pre-season testing programme and also led to Robert Kubica's retirement from fourth place in Melbourne.

Zander's move means that Willy Rampf is currently performing a combined technical director and chief designer role, as he did prior to Zander's arrival from Williams in April 2006. BMW have not revealed whether they intend to recruit a new chief designer.

Rampf said that the team have identified the root of the gearbox problems.

"Within one millisecond you have hydraulic pressures building up in the region of 200 bar," he said. "Such enormous strains you do not encounter in normal hydraulic systems.

"It was always the same sealing which started leaking so what we did now is to reduce the mileage of those sealings."