Officially announced earlier that Sauber will unveil their 2013 car on the 2nd February at their Hinwil base, before presumably taking part in the first test at Jerez 3 days later. The car has passed the mandatory FIA safety tests, and Sergio Perez has said that he believes his old team will be in a position to challenge for the occasional race win in 2013.
If Perez reckons they can win, does that mean they've been putting the Telmex money to use? Hopefully they can give The Hulk a good car.
I'd like to think they have. Sauber have never been my favourite team, but I like the way they tend to quietly go about doing their job on a very modest budget.
The only thing about Sauber is you get the feeling that they won't be allowed to push too hard in case their customer engine embarrasses the works team. (Although it's not as big a deal now they're not loaning Ferrari drivers I guess). Combine that with a lack of serious funding (remember when they came back and had no sponsors for a couple of races?). I've always liked them but I also can't really see them producing a car with genuine race-winning pace for some time. That said, Hulkenberg definitely has the talent - time will tell if he can be a team leader mind, remember what happened to his predecessor - and they had their chassis homologated very early so they've got lots of time to focus on aerodynamics. On which subject, it might also interest people to know that some of the former BMW aerodynamicists (i.e. the ones behind the 2007 and 2008 cars) returned to the team last year.
