Sauber chief designer Matt Morris says that the newly-launched C31 is a "base car" that is "very flexible".

13267 - New C31 is 'flexible' - Morris

The team unveiled its 2012 car at Jerez on Monday morning, with retained drivers Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez showing it to the media before Kobayashi completed a shakedown on the circuit. Aside from the obvious nose solution, Morris said that the car was quite a big departure from the previous C30.

"We've made quite a few changes," Morris said. "Obviously we've adopted the high nose approach which seems to be quite popular in the pit lane this year. We've spent a lot of effort on the front and rear suspension of the car to try and get over some of our setup issues that we suffered from last year particularly in qualifying."

With three pre-season tests before the first race in Melbourne, Morris said the team would be testing and adding a number of upgrades to the car, and that it could be developed in a number of different directions.

"The chassis has been designed around a much tighter package, but although it's tight we feel it's very flexible in terms of allowing us to introduce lots of different aerodynamic developments that we've got planned between now and Melbourne. Obviously with the exhaust regulations that's also been a big challenge, and again we've got a base car here that we're rolling out that again allows us to test lots of different options around the rear of the car. So we feel we've put in place a very flexible car to challenge for those point-scoring positions."