Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has joined those who are highly impressed with the progress made by Ferrari over the off-season winter months.
Like the Maranello based works team, the Swiss outfit Sauber has made an obvious step forward ahead of the 2015 season. The common element is Ferrari's improved V6 turbo power unit package.
"From the data we have here," Sauber team boss and co-owner Kaltenborn told Motorsport Aktuell at Jerez, "we assume that Ferrari has made a big step forward.
"How much progress there is relevant to the competition, I cannot say right now," she admitted.
Kaltenborn also insisted, however, that Sauber itself - completely pointless in the 2014 season - can take much of the credit for the strong showing so far of its new blue and yellow C34 car.
"It was important for us to take a different approach," she said. "The fact that we dare to take a risk and go a different way.
"We must take a clear step forward," Kaltenborn added. "It cannot be that we stay where we ended up last year. We belong somewhere else because we can build better cars than that."