BMW Sauber have now wrapped upwardly their wintertime testing schedule and are going home for terminal preparations for the 2009 F1 season starter March 28 in Melbourne Australia. Wintertime testing is also the only testing available to the teams for the entire season equally the new F1 regulations ban all in season testing.

I have paid shut attention to BMW Sauber's winter testing and have a few thoughts. First, gathering whatever real and specific data on the team'southward progress is nigh incommunicable, but nosotros are able to run into what'south happening on track and come with our own opinions. Reliability, speed, and handling are of course subjective when questions posed to the team are answered with a lot of political savvy rather than specific information. None the less, BMW Sauber seem to be on the right track for a title challenge.

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Reliability has always been a boasting point for the team especially after completing the entire 2008 season without a DNF due to the car itself. Testing this winter started off of course with a make new style of car to comply with the new regulations and straight out of the box reliability didn't seem to exist a big result. Certainly bug did pop upwardly, but they were minor in nature and corrected chop-chop with no recurrences of the same issues again. BMW Sauber`south last test session in Barcelona this week saw hundreds of kilometers put on the car including full race distance testing, starts, and pit piece of work with not a reliability outcome in sight.

KERS has been tested extensively this winter and after a few initial problems including condom, not much was reported and no problems were evident. This leads me to believe that the team`s KERS organization is working well, but Dr. Mario Theissen (team main) remains on the debate when asked if information technology will exist used for the kickoff race in Melbourne.

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The speed of the F1.09 seems to be at that place and when asked for hot laps, both Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld were able to top the time charts, but more importantly this years times were the same or better than posted this time final year with the F1.08. I often say that testing times are fairly irrelevant, but when looking at times and paying particular attending to consistency, it isn`t difficult to see that the F1.09 is a fast car. At this time, I put it upwards in that location with Ferrari, only don`t hold me to that in Melbourne. Anything tin happen by then.

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The new F1 regulations dramatically changed the aerodynamics of the car leaving the engineers to find new and more basic but innovative ways of generating the down-force and grip they enjoyed in previous years. Slicks returned and added front end grip on braking and dull speed corners, but a lot of work still had to be done to create that overall lost down-strength. So far information technology appears the team has been very successful and both Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld seem fairly happy with grip. Really, drivers are never happy with the grip and always want more than.

Treatment comes from rest and grip which comes from down-strength etc., and past the end of the day yesterday Robert Kubica was echoing what Nick Heidfeld has said, that the car handles well. I tin can`t say much more on that other than neither Nick or Robert had a trip into the gravel all winter.

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Melbourne is just a few weeks away and from my standpoint, the team seems in pretty good shape to compete for wins and the drivers championship with either 1 of their drivers. The firsthand competition for the front may have changed a little at this point with Ferrari, BMW Sauber, and Toyota being touted as the best cars through testing. Toyota is a chip of a surprise, but they have put together a great package and await strong. The other team of notation is McLaren who accept had a dismal wintertime with reliability problems, a couple of crashes, and generally a machine that remains off the pace. That said, it is early and all teams all the same have a few tricks up their sleeves for Melbourne. I expect for BMW Sauber to be right upwards in that location every bit a serious challenger this flavor.

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[Source: BMW AG photos ]