F1: Don’t judge Sauber on 2016 - Kaltenborn

Monisha Kaltenborn does not want Sauber to be judged on its 2016 performance, saying it was "anything but a normal season" for the team.

Financial problems have hampered Sauber for a number of years, with 2014 seeing the team fail to score a point as it finished behind Marussia in the constructors' championship. While last year saw an improvement as Sauber picked up 36 points and finished eighth, this season was another struggle as it only leapfrogged Manor for 10th place by scoring two points at the penultimate round in Brazil.

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While Manor's performance this year has made for a more competitive grid, team principal Kaltenborn told RACER the performance shown by Sauber is not reflective of its true potential.

"Where we are coming from, this is not our normal way," Kaltenborn said. "For us it was anything but a normal season. If we were in our usual way of developing, we are not where we would be. Of course while other teams do a great job, I think you also have to consider that we did not quite have what we normally would have.

"It was way after the middle of the season that our car was finally the kind of car that we would have liked to have started the season with. Imagine what a delay there was there, but that was the situation and you have to deal with. You need a bit of luck as well, on top of all the hard work – which we had but which [Manor] also had for that matter with their point, so that's part of the game."

Following a takeover by Longbow Finance in July, Sauber moved quickly to bring in key additions such as Xevi Pujolar in the role of head of track engineering, Nicolas Hennel de Beaupreau as head of aerodynamics and Ruth Buscombe as strategy engineer. While the team is building for the future, Kaltenborn says the new recruits were able to have an instant impact.

"Through the change of ownership we've had a complete new chapter starting. A lot of it you will hopefully see what effect it will have next year; but instantly we could convince people to come and they could have an immediate effect like on the strategy side, like on the aerodynamic side, like on the track engineering.

"We were not really up to the mark on that before and with these new recruits you can see what a step we took. It is of course all speculation now but who knows, we could maybe have made that point before if we had maybe had that kind of mindset."

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