Following a disastrous 2014 season, the excellent results of the 2015 championship's first race has revived the Sauber team's optimism.
An uncompetitive car, coupled with the Ferrari engine's lack of power, resulted in Sauber completing the 2014 championship without scoring a single point. But after experiencing the worst Formula 1 season of its history, the team finished in the points at the conclusion of last week-end's Australian Grand Prix. Felipe Nasr was 5th at the finish line, his teammate Marcus Ericsson 8th. Sauber might have been helped by the retirements and problems of the other teams in Melbourne, but it seemed that things had returned to normal performance-wise.
“There is a very big improvement”, declared Team Principal Monisha Kaltenborn, who said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the power output of Ferrari's updated hybrid engine. “You need that kind of powertrain. It's never just a lone car, it has to be the right package. (...) The potential is there.” Plenty of points Kaltenborn believes her team will once again regularly score points in 2015: “Last year, we couldn't grab that opportunity because we were so far away. That's the big difference.” “It tells people that we are back. Let's forget last year; that's just a one-off and it shouldn't happen again.” “What we said is that we want to improve”, pointed out Kaltenborn, clearly satisfied with the work accomplished by Sauber's personnel ahead of the 2015 championship. “We have proven that.”
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