BMW confident of reliability

The new BMW F1.07 has been one of the sensations of winter testing - putting in similar performances to the benchmark Ferrari, McLaren and Renault teams.

Those laptimes have seen the team emerge as genuine challengers for race victories this year, although a spate of mechanical problems in testing left them concerned about their ability to finish races.

However, after encouraging simulation runs in recent Bahrain testing and an intense effort at their Hinwil factory, technical director Willi Rampf has said he is optimistic that their reliability problems are now behind them.

"I think it is not a huge concern," Rampf told autosport.com about the reliability of their car. "In Bahrain we did a race simulation with both cars and we completed them without any problems.

"Any problems we did have were with components that were not race spec. I think when parts have a high mileage the failure rate seems to be higher than expected, but for the race new parts should not be a concern."

Rampf praised the efforts of his team to get on top of their reliability issues.

"There was a big push within the team to make sure that we can repeat what happened with our race simulations all the time," he said.

Despite the high expectations surrounding BMW Sauber ahead of the new season, Rampf has said it is difficult to make any firm predictions for this weekend.

"We are quite happy with the performance level we have on our car and we have achieved our targets, our internal targets, but we don't know how quick our car really is compared to the opposition. We have a feeling where we are but in the tests no one knows exactly the fuel amount that other people are running, so I would not be too optimistic.

"I would say fighting for a win is a very high target. I would say that the quickest is Ferrari, which we have seen in Bahrain, and then there is a group of teams - maybe McLaren, Renault and us - which are close together.

"I am quite happy, but we have to wait until Saturday afternoon to see a real comparison. We have seen it in the past that some teams are very strong in January and February but when you start the season they are not so strong any more.

"Even we, a few years ago, had very good pre-season tests, but we were not so good going into the season. I would be careful to be too optimistic."