Condemned by DC after qualifying in Japan, the car will have its swansong at Interlagos before being replasced next season by the first product of Adrian Newey's Red Bull-liveried quill. For some, it cannot come too soon...
"Under Adrian Newey’s leadership, we have one of the strongest groups in
F1, and we made a strategic decision earlier in the summer to turn off the development on the current car to focus on the development of RB3 - next year’s car - which will be a significant step forward for us," team boss Christian Horner told Britain's
ITV netowrk, "It was a very simple and straightforward decision to make to put all our eggs in one basket behind Adrian rather than splitting our resource. Inevitably, there is a bit of short-term pain, but we are expecting to see some longer term gain from it.”
Following Christian Klien's premature departure, Robert Doornbos completes his trio of races alongside Coulthard, and will be looking for a return to his Chinese form after Suzuka replaced a top ten grid slot with an exit in the first round of qualifying.
BMW Sauber – Nick Heidfeld (#16), Robert Kubica (#17):
The inaugural campaign for the BMW Sauber team ends with a top five place up for grabs - but only if Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica can combine to thwart the intentions of an up-and-down
Toyota squad.
Currently fifth in the constructors' championship by one point, BMW Sauber knows that it will have to turn in the sort of performance that led to podiums in Hungary and Italy, rather than the disappointing disaplay from Japan two weeks ago. The German returns to Interlagos with good memories of the circuit from his previous Sauber days.
