Sauber says Monaco masked improvement of F1 upgrades

The Swiss outfit has endured a tough start to the 2013 season, with its car proving less competitive than hoped after one of its strongest campaigns last year.

Neither Nico Hulkenberg not Esteban Gutierrez finished in the points in Monaco, with the German coming home in 11th place, two positions ahead of his rookie team-mate.

Team boss Monisha Kaltenborn insists, however, that Sauber has made progress with its car since introducing a raft of updates in Spain, and reckons Monte Carlo's unique character cannot be used to judge the outfit's real form.

"We cannot take this race to measure the progress that we have made; this race is very special," said Kaltenborn.

"But what's very important is that what we implemented in Barcelona was a good step ahead.

"It wasn't very big but we knew it wasn't going to be extremely big, but it was a good step."

She did admit that progress on its 2014 car will be affected by the amount of resources needed to solve the current car's issues.

"Clearly it's not beneficial to it because we would like to put more resources on real performance development instead of trying to overcome issues to be where we should have been from the beginning," she added.

"So that's not good, but it's the situation we are in."