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Sauber team principal Frederic Vasseur has explained why the team decided to cancel its deal with Honda for 2018. Former team boss Monisha Kaltenborn negotiated the deal before being ousted on the build-up to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
After Vasseur arrived, the deal was quickly cancelled, before the Hinwil squad announced it had signed a new deal with Ferrari to run with up-to-date Italian units. Vasseur admitted that Honda's lack of speed and reliability wasn't the only reason it was dropped.
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"Leaving aside the current issues that Honda has with reliability or performance, as I know that they will come back at some point, the biggest concern for us was that we could not secure the responsibility of the gearbox," he stated to Formula1.com.
"We don’t have the resources internally to build our own gearbox, so we knew that we had to deal with someone. With Honda we would have to deal with McLaren, but I was not so confident that McLaren would continue with Honda. So it would have created a strange situation: asking McLaren to provide the gearbox for a Honda engine when McLaren could be running another engine."
Vasseur's previous job in F1 was the team principal of Renault, a position he held for just one year in 2016. When asked how does a privateer team like Sauber compare to a worldwide brand like Renault, he replied by saying that there is not much difference.
"There is no big difference. The situation is quite similar: we have to improve. We have analysed where we are – we did analysis of each department – and the first decision was to stick with the partnership with Ferrari. That was probably the most important decision, as it will be a mid-term partnership. We can’t change engines permanently from one year to the other. We will stay with Ferrari until the end of the period – that was a crucial decision."
Fergal Walsh
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
C. Sainz jr
5 members have this team as their favourite
Replies (5)
Login to replyf1fan0101
Posts: 1,804
Was always a stupid deal, especially when a Ferrari one was more obvious
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Only one way to find out, innit? Wait for next year and see how things turn out, only then we can truly see whether it was a stupid mistake or not. They will only really have benefitted from a new Ferrari deal if they move up places, otherwise they've just entered another year as a backmarker with one of the/the most expensive supplier on the grid.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
"asking McLaren to provide the gearbox for a Honda engine when McLaren could be running another engine." But thats assuming McLaren wouldnt build a gearbox for them. Im sure McLaren has wares if Sauber has coin. That aside, if McLaren refuse, just go to some private manufacturer like Xtrac, they've provided F1 teams with decent gearboxes for ages.
kngrthr
Posts: 203
it's probably more about getting the deal done now so they can be certain about the gearbox and get certainty about next years car design in that area
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
There's also the FACT that Honda engines suck