Sauber prepares to gamble on youth

Raikkonen's stellar rookie F1 season in 2001 coincided with Sauber's best-ever season, when it finished fourth in the constructors' championship, as well as launching the Finn into world championship contender status with McLaren. While he's under no pressure to rush into a deal to replace his diamond of 2004, the Williams- or Renault-bound Giancarlo Fisichella, Sauber admits his desire to unearth a new gem to the F1 ranks.

"Normally this approach doesn't reflect my character, but a Formula 1 team is not something static - it is moving, it is living, it is changing and there is a psychological aspect," says Sauber. "For a team like us, it would be good to have a young, wild driver with the hope that he can be great, rather than a known driver where you know what you get but you also know what you don't get. It is important that you feel that as a team principal."

With its state-of-the-art windtunnel now finally on stream, the first fruits of which contributed to Fisichella's impressive fifth place from the back of the grid at Silverstone, there is undoubtedly some momentum building at Hinwil.

"After the weekend in Silverstone it is easy to say we are happy with the progress this season," says Sauber. "In the end we are happy with the points because last year we finished with 19 points and now we have 18, and we were not especially lucky in the races this year, we were involved in some incidents that were not our fault like Monaco with Giancarlo."

Sauber admits that the performance gain from the new aerodynamic package at Silverstone was an eye-opener: "Yes, I was really surprised because we made some small steps and we feel at the practice laps that the new bodywork was good. I was really surprised, because we never drove it for one mile on the track before then! We painted it here [at Hinwil] and went direct to the circuit, both engine covers only arrived on the Thursday morning."

Battlelines are now drawn against overcoming the midfielders to consolidate its sixth position in the constructors' standings, and Sauber is growing more confident that its target is achievable.

"I think we are now strong enough to fight against Jaguar and Toyota successfully," says Sauber, who stops short of including McLaren in that list. "It was normal that we were looking at them [McLaren] because they were where they were, but it was clear when they got back to where they should be then they would be gone. They have completely different possibilities."

It has been all too easy to accuse Sauber of flattering to deceive on a regular basis - strong early-season form has all too often disintegrated into mediocrity. This year, however, has been the antithesis of that - because it knew its campaign was compromised from the start.

"I think when we started we did not understand the car well," he admits. "We had two new drivers, two new race engineers and altogether it was too much. On the other side, we started to work on the windtunnel in the middle of March and we have some problems, small and big ones, with the windtunnel. That is normal and now we start to work on a professional way. But, anyway, I think we need one year to understand this tool very well.

"[At the start of the year] our intention was to go as close as possible to the shape of the Ferrari car. We made a firm decision not to use the windtunnel and take Ferrari's gearbox to go as close as possible because there was no windtunnel. We did not do any major testing in the windtunnel over the winter."

Sauber refuses to be drawn on what else can be achieved this year, despite the success of Silverstone being so fresh in the memory: "It is difficult to say, I hope we can develop the car more. We work now on the front wing, on the rear wing, on the diffuser and I hope we will find one or the other points in downforce.

"The biggest question for me are the tyres. We were very happy with the tyres during the race in Silverstone but, again, we lost however many tenths in qualifying. We know it and Bridgestone knows it, and they work had in this area too. I don't know if it is possible to go forward and when the track is very hot, like it often is at Hockenheim, then the performance will not be as good as at Silverstone."

So don't put your money on Sauber just yet then, save it for the future. That's what Herr Sauber is betting on.