Mixed season for Sauber

Kamui Kobayashi believes the Sauber team have had a mixed 2011 season to-date.

The Japanese driver was named as the teams number one driver for this season, despite only being in his second full season of Formula One.

The team opted to name rookie driver Sergio Perez alongside Kobayashi for the season and despite an inexperienced line-up the team enjoyed a good start to the season.

On the track the team scored solid points in Melbourne with Perez finishing seventh and Kobayashi in eighth. However their joy was short lived, as they were both disqualified due to a technical infringement involving the uppermost element of the rear wing.

In Malaysia and China, again Sauber had a good showing with Kobayashi finishing seventh, in China, Kobayashi was again in the points finishing tenth.

'We had an amazing start to the season in Melbourne, and also since then have had some other good races in which we have been quite competitive. My highlights were Monaco and Montreal. a reflecting Kobayashi told Autosport Magazine.

'But we have also had our struggles. In Melbourne we lost ten points when we were disqualified, then I had punctures in Turkey and Barcelona, and then gearbox problems in Silverstone and most recently in Monza.

But Kobayashi believes the team were left behind with in season developments in comparison to the other teams.

Sauber didn't bring an update to the track until Barcelona, which left the team playing catch-up and then the developments didn't bring the improvements that they had hoped.

'You can add to that the fact not all our technical developments during the season brought the progress we expected. So far it has been a mixed season with ups and downs, but it isn't over yet.'

Kobayashi is currently twelfth in the drivers standings and is just seven points shy of cracking into the top ten.

While in the constructors championship, Sauber are seventh, twelve points behind Force India and seven ahead of Toro Rosso.