Sauber: Merc gained an advantage

Sauber: Merc gained an advantage

Monisha Kaltenborn has weighed in on the Mercedes Pirelli test debate, saying the team definitely gained an advantage.

Mercedes will appear before the FIA's International Tribunal in the coming weeks after running a controversial three-day test with Pirelli.

The Brackley squad used this year's W04 for the outing at the Circuit de Catalunya, an alleged breach of the F1 regulations.

Merc, though, insist the test did not give them an advantage over their rivals.
Their rivals, however, disagree.

"From the facts that we have heard in the media, they were testing 2014 tyres," Kaltenborn told Autosport.
"So if you get an idea of 2014 tyres, even if they are maybe developed later on, you at least have some basic knowledge which the others don't have.

"And if you have experts with all those sensors, then you cannot exclude at least that you will not gain some benefit from there and know at least what you shouldn't be doing - which is also a benefit.

"None of us can assess how much and how big the advantage is for next year's car, because we are all at a very critical time of developing our car.

"A lot of decisions have to be made now in to what direction you want to go, and you have to define certain layouts and concepts of the car. And we all can simply not assess it, but nobody can deny that there could be an advantage."

The Sauber team boss added that it is up to the FIA to determine how much of an advantage Mercedes gained.

"It is often so difficult to prove how much is a performance gain really linked to one specific test. Sometimes you see something and you come to another idea of that, and you can never prove these things really.

"But the other point which is equally if not more important: could they have any advantage for the future because this is such a decisive time of where you are with your new car?

"You maybe get some direction from testing new tyres for next year and you know in which direction you should be going. None of us can assess sitting here, what advantage you might have or not."