BMW vow to take radical approach

The German car manufacturer recently took the bold decision to not build a second wind tunnel at their Hinwil factory, instead vowing to pursue a simulation policy based around their new supercomputer Albert 2.

And on the back of the team having pushed rookies Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel hard last year, as well as courting controversy with an aggressive aerodynamic policy, BMW Sauber are showing no signs of being conservative.

Theissen thinks that such a tactic is vital for his team as they look to close up on the teams ahead of them.

"If you want to catch the big players, the experienced players, the established ones, then you have to think out of the box," Theissen told autosport.com in a feature about their policy. 

"If you do everything like they do it, then in the best case you will only close in."

Although the team made big progress last year, Theissen remains cautious about BMW Sauber's ambitions for 2007 - reiterating that they are not looking at race victories just yet.

"The problem is as soon as you achieve something, expectations raise quicker than you can follow," he said. "And, to be realistic, we have always said that we want to achieve podiums out of our own strength in 2007 - and that hasn't changed.

"We had one podium out of our own strength in 2006, which was Monza due to a superb job of the aerodynamicists. And this year we need to do that more often. That is our target.

"And then if some cars in front of us fail, then we have to be there and maybe get something more. But it would not be realistic to win a race out of our own strength."

For a full analysis of why BMW Sauber have opted for a supercomputer rather than a second wind tunnel, see this week's journal article.