F1: Sauber insists test absence won't hurt

Sauber technical director Mark Smith says the fact it is not debuting its 2016-spec car until next week's second pre-season Formula 1 test will "not hurt us too much".

The Swiss team adjusted its plans due to the late change to the F1 calendar and instead ran last year's car at the opening four-day test. Its C35 will make its debut on Tuesday, when the second test at Barcelona begins.

"I don't think it's going to hurt us too much," he said. "Given a blank sheet of paper and no race schedule changes, we would be at both tests but we're not. Rather than focusing too much energy worrying about it, we decided to extract as much as we can with the old car that is relevant to 2016. If we have a half decent test with the new car, we'll be fine."

Smith said running with the 2015 car was useful, particularly in terms of gathering tire data for this year, as Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson logged 432 laps between them.

"Ideally we would have been there with the new car but in terms of schedule, that didn't work out because of date change and so on," said Smith. "But with limited testing nowadays, whenever you go to the pre-season tests with new cars, there are so many things you need to work through that lots of other 'nice to do' stuff – a lot of it around tires in terms of canvas sweeps and all sorts of sweeps - you never get the chance to do.

"I believe we'll gather some quite useful information that will be applicable for 2016, so it's definitely worthwhile."

Originally on Autosport.com