Sauber F1 team boss Monisha Kaltenborn is confident that the Swiss based team can still have high hopes for 2017, despite limited development on this years car.

The Hinwil based team was sold to new owners Longbow Finance back in July, as early season struggles threatened the survival of the  team. Prior to the takeover, team survival was more important than updates to the 2016 chassis.

However since the new owners came in, the Sauber team have brought a string of updates to this years car. The question is though, how much will this year’s issues have compromised the 2017 chassis design?

Kaltenborn remains defiant that next years car won’t suffer as a result.

“Some things will take a while. You can’t be quicker, that’s the way things move,” Kaltenborn said. “But I think in terms of development we could do a lot of things when it comes to looking at next year’s car.

“We couldn’t implement many things on this year’s car, but other capabilities are very much there. So we could do that.

“There can be a bit of an effect on that, I’m not saying everything was just going on normally, but it shouldn’t give us any reason why we can’t make as step ahead next year.

“Ideally you want to test the parts a bit more, but I think we should be able to overcome and make up for that.”

Sauber have yet to score a point this season, and sit in 10th place in the constructors championship as a result. The Manor Racing team, fresh from their own troubles last year are above them on one point.

Kaltenborn went onto admit that beating Manor to 10th place is vitally important, as the financial benefit is huge.

“The importance is many millions, it’s all I can tell you,” she said.

“Of course it [finishing 11th] would have an impact, but that’s something we really don’t want to look at, because we think we can still manage it and that’s what we are focused on rather than looking at what to do if we don’t manage it.”

 It may be hard to see where the team can score a point from though, with the remaining tracks to come coupled with their current form. Drivers Nasr and Ericsson definitely have their work cut out.