Sauber Pre Season Performance?

[Oz83]

With Marcus Ericsson living just down the road from me here in Sweden, I've been keeping a keen eye on their progress during the pre season tests.

Here are their results from the first two tests:

Test #1
Day 1 - Ericsson 2nd - 73 laps
Day 2 - Nasr 2nd - 98 laps
Day 3 - Nasr 1st- 109 laps
Day 4 - Ericsson 2nd - 112 laps

Rest #2
Day 1 - Nasr 5th - 79 laps
Day 2 - Ericsson 9th - 113 laps
Day 3 - Ericsson 4th - 53 laps (gearbox issue prevented running)
Day 4 - Nasr 4th - 73 laps

I know that it's testing and it's pretty impossible to make any meaningful comparisons (although a fuss is made when Ferrari tops the time sheets), but it seems to me that Sauber have put together a reliable, certainly competitive package for this year. Could they be running low fuel to attract more sponsors or is their car pretty quick?

[BritishRacinGrin]

Last year's Sauber shouldn't have been hard to improve upon, they were frequently only one grid row ahead of Caterham / Marussia and looked very lost when those two teams disappeared. The Sauber I remember is the white car which was scoring podiums and very nearly a win a few years ago.

Do I think they've improved? yes. Do I thing their testing pace is representative of their competetive pace? No. They're conspicuously trying harder if you ask me, and I'd expect them to be hopefully in the points more often than they were last year but I don't think this is the beginning of some giant killing run of form.

I'm not convinced their drivers are as good as say, Perez or Kobayashi either, especially Nasr who has already demonstrated his lack of experience.

[Oz83]

Thanks for the reply. I agree, Nasr's incident in testing doesn't inspire confidence, but I guess money talks. I don't know the exact stats but I seem to remember Ericsson outperforming (or at least equalling) Kobayashi when they were together at Caterham. From Ericssons twitter posts and interviews in Swedish media, it seems that they have a very intense and structured test program. It should be interesting to follow their progress this year.

The two drivers I'm following this year are Jenson and Ericsson. Maybe they will be competing for grid position :-)