Ahead of its 20th season in F1, Sauber has unveiled its 2012 contender, the C31, which continues the trend of noses that will have fans wincing.

Featuring an unchanged driver line-up, with Kamui Kobayashi, Sergio Perez and reserve driver Esteban Gutierrez, the Swiss outfit is looking to further improve in 2012.

"We're aiming to start the new season as strongly as we did in 2011, but then also to maintain this level of performance throughout the year," said Peter Sauber. "Our goal is to finish regularly in the points so as to put ourselves in a significantly better position in the World Championship."

Only three of their rivals on this year's grid have been in Formula One longer than Peter Sauber's team. After an excellent start to 2011, the team's form fell away mid-way through the season following the decision to cease development of a controversial technology. "The Sauber C31-Ferrari boasts a large number of promising new developments, but in other areas it is a systematic further development of last year's car," says Sauber.

Summarising all the efforts put into developing the new Sauber C31-Ferrari, Chief Designer Matt Morris said: "The C31 is revolutionary where we had fresh ideas, particularly at the rear of the car, and it is an evolution where we knew we could carry over certain approaches. We had to improve on the weaknesses we identified on the C30, but at the same time we wanted to maintain its strengths."

The engineers opted again to go with a high chassis design. However, according to the new 2012 regulations, the nose cone needs to be lower, which is a safety requirement. As a result, the nose cone has quite a different shape to how it was in the past. The chassis itself shows absolute minimum cross sections all the way to the cockpit.

By an overall tidier design, the front suspension has been optimised for integration with the chassis and the upright. Otherwise it's a traditional layout with a pushrod and a high-level wishbone.

Packaging was further optimised under the side pods in order to open up more aerodynamic development scope in that area. The cooling layout is based around a similar philosophy to the C30, because that proved to be effective. It helps to get the volume of the coolers forward and allows the design of very compact rear bodywork.

A familiar element of the car is the Ferrari engine, onto which an all-new carbon transmission is bolted - also supplied by Ferrari. The longitudinally mounted transmission is a very tidy, neat unit. The entire rear of the car is much more tightly packaged, helped by the gearbox design, and in addition the engineers have gone in some new directions around the floor at the back of the car. The exhaust tailpipe positions are regulated in 2012, which has had a further effect on how the bodywork design has been set out.