They finished fourth in last year's World Championship, and if the optimism and even initial testing is anything to go by, Sauber will do the same again this year. Sauber have already been very impressive, particularly in Nick Heidfeld's hands. They expect great things from new driver Felipe Massa, but perhaps he is going to have to temper his enthusiasm to do as well, if not better, than former rival Kimi Raikkonen.

After a little testing with last year's car, the new C21 first ran on January 15 at Fiorano. "It was absolutely the best roll out," says technical director Willy Rampf. "Can you imagine? You put about four to five thousand individual components together, then you go to the race track, you start the engine, you go out on the circuit, come back, check everything, there are no leaks, nothing's rubbing, you don't have to cut anything, you don't have to modify anything. So you go out again and after about seven laps we started setting up the car, which is amazing."

The C21 did 59 laps then, a test curtailed by snow. Six days later, Nick Heidfeld began a three day test at Barclona, setting times very close to that of David Coulthard. After the launch near Zurich, and a few days later, two Sauber-Petronas C21s were back at Barcelona, setting times only bettered by their friends at Ferrari.

The C21 was designed by the team under the supervision of Rampf. This is the man who has brought new life to Sauber. He instigated last year's highly successful development programme which he has accelerated in 2002, so that development parts have arrived even during testing; they used to arrive long after the first three races.

The Swiss team could be accused of going for the safe option. Happily, Petronas buys them last year's Ferrari engine, which is well-proven, developed and reliable by the time it gets in a Sauber, perfect for lots of pre-season testing and early points scoring. This year's offering is shorter, light with a lower of center of gravity, a designer's dream.

Yet Rampf has taken a slight gamble. The C21 is 80 per cent new. "Why have we produced a new car? The C20 could be used, but that's not enough for us. We set ourselves goals, which was to improve on the C20 in every respect. We have taken bigger risks with the new car than with the C20.

"So what is new? The aerodynamics. We have a new shape air inlet and also highly visible are the high side pods which give more cooling as required by this year's engine, but don't give us more drag. The cockpit sides were also higher last year but Nick had problems seeing other cars at the start, so now they are 30 millimeters lower. There are many other changes that can't be seen.

"Our goal was also to reduce weight by 10 kilos, to use more ballast and we achieved that, if not surpassed it. In order to reach these goals, we had to look at every component and we asked every designer to rethink and redesign every part of the car.

"The new car changes direction well, I think because of the lower centre of gravity. We also reduced the polar moment of intertia, basically reducing the mass at the front and rear ends."

Rampf knows that he has to make every Swiss franc of his budget count. Last year, Peter Sauber would complain that he didn't have enough money and the budget is unchanged this year. The team will again run a one-car test team.

Much has been written about team's loss of Red Bull as title sponsor but Sauber refers to Petronas and Credit Suisse as the team's major partners, and Red Bull remains the team's main sponsor. If the budget is unchanged, then the only apparent change is that another sponsor must be contributing more to make up for Red Bull's smaller stake.

Of course, it could be said that Sauber's other gamble is on young, 'cheap' drivers. Nick Heidfeld stays with the team, while replacing Raikkonen is Brazil's 20-year old Felipe Massa - who beat Raikkonen in some Formula Renault events in 2000, and since then has won the Formula 3000 Euro-series.

While appreciating the consistency and testing capabilities of Heidfeld, Rampf is also looking forward to Massa's performances, in spite of several off-circuit excursions in testing. "I think Felipe will surprise us, we will see some very nice surprises in qualifying," says Rampf. "I think he has been pushing too hard. We had to explain that testing isn't qualifying, that he has to go for consistent lap times instead of a qualifying lap. But Felipe on a quick lap is quicker than Kimi."

Sauber, in many ways, is lucky. The team is in a Formula One wilderness. Move from Sauber to another Formula One team and you have to move house - not like the English teams, or Ferrari/Minardi. So the Swiss team tends to remain stable. Technical director Willy Rampf is now more confident and able to give the engineering impetus that Leo Ress failed to provide. And even though they lost designer Sergio Rinland and his successor Stephen Taylor failed to arrive, the Sauber engineers, with Seamus Mullarkey still in charge of aerodynamics, have provided what has already proved to be a competitive car. And the only major change has been bringing talented Belgian Jacky Eeckelaert in as head of track engineering from chief test engineer.

Peter Sauber knows that third place in the championship is almost an impossibility, unless he is going to win races. And he knows that everyone has eyes on his fourth place. "I'm a realist," he says. "I know that we have to aim to hold onto fourth again. We can't afford to do anything more."

Bob Constanduros