• Spanish Grand Prix

Sauber targeting first points with Barcelona updates

Kamui Kobayashi is looking forward to finishing a race © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Kamui Kobayashi
• |
• Pedro de la Rosa

• Teams:
• Alfa Romeo

Sauber is confident of a big step forward at the Spanish Grand Prix and Pedro de la Rosa is expecting to be competing for points.

Sauber is the only team other than F1's newcomers not to score this season and has only finished one race after several reliability issues. Like all its rivals, it is bringing a raft of updates to the next race in Barcelona and de la Rosa is confident it could make the difference at his home track.

"We had a good winter test there and I have the feeling our car suits Barcelona better than some of the more recent tracks," he said. "For the Spanish Grand Prix we will also have a new aero package in place. I'm sure at the end of the race we will either be close to or in the points."

Kamui Kobayashi has yet to finish a race this year but is expecting a problem-free weekend in Spain.

"We have an update to the car and I believe our reliability problems are solved," he said. "I should have a good chance to finally go racing after I have only done 19 laps in total in all four races."

Technical director James Key is also optimistic about the car's potential next weekend and said ongoing work on its F-duct could give it an edge over competitors.

"We have some updates for Barcelona, as most of the teams will have," he said. "We are trying to push our F-Duct design a step further. This is obviously a technology that will eventually appear all the way down the grid during the year, but our team has some experience of it from the first events. Additionally we have a package of updates on the car, which are particularly on the front end and the diffuser. It's a decent package, which will hopefully allow us to find some more performance. Obviously a lot depends on how tough the competition is. Some of the steps address the issues the team has identified in terms of the aero characteristics, so it should make the car a little bit better purely through changing the way it behaves."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.