Running 2015 F1 car in first Barcelona test won't hurt, Sauber says

The Swiss team adjusted its plans due to the late change to the F1 calendar and instead ran last year's car at the opening four-day test.

Its C35 will make its debut on Tuesday, when the second test at Barcelona begins.

"I don't think it's going to hurt us too much," he told Autosport.

"Given a blank sheet of paper and no race schedule changes, we would be at both tests but we're not.

"Rather than focusing too much energy worrying about it, we decided to extract as much as we can with the old car that is relevant to 2016.

"If we have a half decent test with the new car, we'll be fine."

Smith said running with the 2015 car was useful, particularly in terms of gathering tyre data for this year, as Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson logged 432 laps between them.

"Ideally we would have been there with the new car but in terms of schedule, that didn't work out because of date change and so on," said Smith.

"But with limited testing nowadays, whenever you go to the pre-season tests with new cars, there are so many things you need to work through that lots of other 'nice to do' stuff - a lot of it around tyres in terms of canvas sweeps and all sorts of sweeps - you never get the chance to do.

"I believe we'll gather some quite useful information that will be applicable 2016 so it's definitely worthwhile."