Building a team is a long-term challenge

During the first two Formula One races of the season in Bahrain and Malaysia, the new BMW Sauber F1 Team experienced its first real test. BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen and Jacques Villeneuve give details about how the development of the team is coming along.

"I can say that I'm proud of what the team has done over the past eight months," said Mario Theissen. "But that was only the start of a programme of several years." Since the 'birth' of the BMW Sauber F1 Team in June 2005, the employees have been working hard to efficiently integrate the sites in Hinwil and Munich. In order to be able to close the gap to the current top teams in Formula One racing, the next few months will see a further increase in staff and infrastructure.

"We started last summer with 275 people in Switzerland. Now we have 320, still one to two hundred fewer than our competitors," Theissen explains. "We have decided to expand the factory, which will only start this summer, so I'm happy if we have everything in place by the end of 2007." During this development process, one of the most important goals of the team is to be able to run the new state-of-the-art wind tunnel in three shifts as soon as possible, to further optimise the car's performance.

Drivers Jacques Villeneuve is obviously an important part of the team. He adds: "We've built on the people we had there last year, added people, added budget and everybody's just excited. The workload that can be achieved is a lot more because of that." One 2nd April Jacques and the rest of the team will be competing for World Championship points during the Australian Grand Prix once more.