Contender to the Throne?

BMW showed off their 2009 challenger – a car which has a weighty expectation to carry.

The car is missing the now familiar Credit Suisse sponsor on the engine cover. The long-time Sauber sponsor has left its role as sponsor, given the much used ‘restructuring’ reasoning.

Towards the end of last year, Robert Kubica voiced his concerns on a number of occasions about the team giving up on the 2008 campaign. Given the amount of time spend on the development bed; there shouldn’t be any excuse for a lack of competitively from the Anglo-German team.

Of course, we have all heard this before. Remember Renault over the last few years? Early development didn’t see them return to form.

Despite championing the controversial KERS system, even BMW have stated they are unsure if they will run with it for the start of the year. A number of teams have taking pot shots at BMW for pushing for KERS to implemented in 2009. Of course, what did anyone expect?! Having spent so much time (and money), they were hardly going to roll over and say ‘sure, let’s delay it!’

The KERS system, which involves the transfer of kinetic energy that can be used as a power boost, has courted controversy since its early development. Everything from high development costs to mechanics getting shocked has happened over the last year with the system.

A standard system is in the pipelines for 2010, making many teams question the waste of money in developing a system to be used for one year only. Despite this, everyone is still following the developmental pied piper – unwilling to let one team get any sort of advantage, even if it costs a shed load of money.

Pictures of the 2009 BMW-Sauber challenger can be found here at Autosports website.