Klien: '09 BMW worst looking car ever

"I never saw such a sexy car," joked Klien after testing. "It looks very, very new to everybody.

"To me, for the moment, it's the worst (looking) Formula One car I have ever seen. It just doesn't fit together.

"But we will get used to it. There will be a lot of modifications until the first race in March."

All eyes were on the German squad yesterday, when the team ran with an hybrid 2008 car fitted with a 2009 aerodynamic configuration, designed to provide a lot less downforce.

The very wide front and the narrow rear wing did not make for an attractive car, although Klien admitted driving it was a different matter.

"It drives quite well, actually. As you saw, the laptimes are quite good already," the Austrian added. "There is still a few improvements coming over the winter. Basically it's quite a lot less downforce but with the slick tyres it compensates quite a lot.

"Especially in the slow-speed corners you get much more grip with the slick tyres. High-speed corners are a bit more tricky. But the main problem today was the cold temperatures."

The BMW Sauber tester said it was still very hard to bring the new slick tyres up to working temperature.

"These are the first slick tyres basically. Now I'm not sure if they have some improvement for these tyres but the warm-up doesn't seem to be very good, even in summer time," he said.

"Slicks is for sure the right direction. The race car looks better on slicks. It's also important to change regulations after a few years to give some other teams an opportunity and to keep the speeds down. Now we will lose maybe two seconds."

The Austrian also said he is not expecting the regulation changes to allow drivers to run too closely to each other.

"Even with these aerodynamics it's still not possible to drive right behind another car. We will see in the first few races. It's more of a problem to not knock off the front wing at the first corner.

"This morning we were not sure we could drive in the last chicane, where the kerbs are quite high. But it's not a problem actually."