Theissen: BMW under no pressure

Robert Kubica's second place in Fuji, allied to problems for both McLaren and Ferrari, has kept the Polish driver and BMW Sauber in contention for the championship with only the Chinese and Brazilian Grands Prix remaining.

And although the team's F1.08 has not been a match for McLaren and Ferrari in terms of pace this year, Theissen is sure the team's consistency could yet pay off.

"We know about our strengths which are reliability, race strategy and good pit work," he explained. "And we are not under pressure. We can really go into the race confident, see where the chances open up and then be there."

Theissen believes there was little point in trying to ramp up the team's determination for the weekend - as he felt everyone knew what their role would be.

"You need not do anything to focus on the team members, in such a situation everybody knows what is possible," he said. "We are fighting for it, so that is not necessary.

"I think what we have shown in the past races, if you put aside the penalty for Robert in Singapore, that we are able to exploit the potential. And that should be the case in the final two races as well."

Even if BMW Sauber fail in their bid to overhaul McLaren and Ferrari before the end of the season, however, Theissen says there are no regrets about other points-scoring opportunities they have missed this season.

"We have lost some points here or there, but if you look at the raw car performance then the other two teams have definitely lost more points than us. So I think our rate of exploitation is definitely very good, there is no technical failure. I think we have scored in every race so I would not say it is down to this or that situation in a specific race.

"From a performance point of view I am happy with the season. If you look at last year, we finished second but were the third strongest team. The other two teams had 200 points and we had just 101.

"If you look at the gap now, and look at the results, we had two podiums last year and this season we have had 11 already, so that marks a huge step forward again. If this is the picture at the end of the year then I am still very happy."