Sauber must keep delivering - Kaltenborn

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has warned her team to continue delivering updates off the back of its first points of the season.

An aggressive one-stop strategy saw Wehrlein secure seventh on the road in the Spanish Grand Prix, although he was relegated to eighth as a result of a five-second time penalty. The result puts Sauber ahead of McLaren in the constructors' championship, but with a year-old Ferrari power unit in the back of the car, Sauber is likely to lose competitiveness as the season goes on.

Kaltenborn has challenged the team to make up for the deficit with its car development, and when asked by RACER if the points in Spain were vindication of the decision to use a year-old power unit she replied: "It's very interesting that now people are trying to argue it this way because before that our car clearly lacks also on the aero side.

"But there are many factors. It is never right to say it was just the powertrain, the car is not there where it should be. The powertrain we all knew, so there's no reason to make a drama out of that because we knew what it was going to be. Up until now we have had situations where we could not utilize the power of the entire engine.

"So it's simply not correct to blame it all on the engine, you have to be fair enough and say the car is also not quite there. But our aero department took the words they got to hear a while ago extremely seriously and they know what they have to deliver.

"It's a high target. I told you there's going to be a very aggressive, demanding development plan which is in place and they have to achieve that. You have the stability, you have all the funds for it, that the technical side has to deliver."

However, Kaltenborn says the initial signs were good after some initial new parts were introduced in Spain last weekend.

"It was very small, so actually that's very promising which tells you that whatever was brought there was in the right direction and that gives you all the confidence for the next update coming up."

Asked if she sees Sauber fighting McLaren for the rest of the season, Kaltenborn replied: "I hope so!

"We should never underestimate them, it's a very experienced team. They have a lot more resources - maybe financial, maybe personnel-wise - so we should not take that challenge lightly."