The Sauber-run team unveiled its new car in Warsaw at an event held in partnership with its co-title sponsor PKN Orlen, with drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi joined by third and reserve driver Robert Kubica. The Ferrari-powered car has some aerodynamic changes with the main area of focus being the front end, in similar form to the approach taken by AlphaTauri as teams were limited on where they could spend development tokens. 

“By regulation we couldn’t change all the structural components on the car,” technical director Jan Monchaux said. “We decided to invest our two tokens on a new nose, so the nose box and the crash box is brand new, which was mainly driver for aero reasons. Then obviously we reworked massively the front suspension, the front wing and the front brake ducts — where the guys invested a lot of effort — as well as the bargeboards and all the deflectors at the front of the car.

“The rest of the effort was mainly on the floor, the diffuser, the parts that you don’t necessarily see between the rear tires — where due to the change in regulations we lost a lot of performance on the floor, on the diffuser and on the rear brake ducts. There we put all of our efforts to try and recover the loss, which means in return all of those things I haven’t listed in a very simple way are carryover.

“So the chassis is the same, the gearbox is obviously the same, most of the rear suspension as well because of the regulations. Then for more return of investment reasons we decided to carry over some extra components like the radiators and some parts of the bodywork. In the short time we had and the resources we had to concentrate on the areas we were expecting to provide the highest return on investment. We will see in a couple of weeks time if the choices we made were correct.”

The new car features an updated livery and fresh Ferrari power unit for 2021, that will get its first laps during a shakedown in Barcelona on Friday.