Formula One news

No KERS for BMW in Turkey

The BMW team has elected not to run the KERS device for the third straight race in Turkey. The Hilwil-based squad, keen to develop the system pre-season, has decided to temporarily abandon its usage in the belief that the added weight of KERS creates a greater loss to the F1.09's performance than the performance gained from the 80bhp boost.

BMW, having made gradual progress since 2006 and expected to be major championship contenders this year, have only second and seventh place finishes for Heidfeld in Malaysia and Spain as anything to shout about so far in 2009, although the German is confident that improvements will be made in Istanbul this weekend. "I think it is important to us, similar to the Barcelona weekend where we had already said before that it was important to see our new developments are working - and it's the same here," Heidfeld said in Turkey on Thursday, also stressing the importance of track time in a season featuring a ban on circuit testing.

Heidfeld believes that a points finish may not be outside the bounds of possibilty in Istanbul

"It's going to be a step forward for us and we are also working on other stuff that is already in the pipeline for the coming races," he continued. "I expect that Monaco was a one-off; it's not an excuse, because it's not nice to struggle so much at Monaco, but I still believe that it's not a representative circuit and we should be better here and I guess it will be a similar situation for Toyota."

The 32-year-old went on to explain that, without running KERS, the team is able to focus more on the aerodynamic development of the car. "I think in Barcelona we could see that we also made a step forward," he added. "I think Ferrari had the biggest step forward but we clearly had a big improvement as well, going for two points with seventh position, which is not what we originally targeted for but was something that was out of reach before Barcelona - it is impressive to see how much we have come back."

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