Kamui Kobayashi is hoping Sauber's final upgrades will yield a big enough reward for him to have a strong showing in Japan.
Kobayashi is back home and relishing the attention, even contesting a rather amusing soapbox race on the start-finish straight at Suzuka on Thursday.
However, it's what Sauber can do with his F1 car that is a more pressing topic for the Japanese driver, who believes their new updates will produce the performance step they are seeking.
"We have reasonable update. For us it will be like last update. We had a couple of small updates but this is biggest step for this year.
"This circuit, the aerodynamics are quite important, so I think if it works well we can see a good result and this is what we want for this week."
The Japanese driver is also hoping that racing in front of his home crowd will be more of an advantage than a pressure point.
"It is easier I hope, but if the car is good it is always easier. But Suzuka is quite a tough track.
"When you only have one lap to get it together it is quite tricky. For the race a small mistakes means you are always missing a lot of lap time. This circuit is not easy, but if the car is good it is not so difficult driving here."
