Frederic Vasseur Shot Down Sauber-Honda Deal

When he took over the reins from Monisha Kaltenborn, the first thing Frederic Vasseur did was cancel Sauber’s 2018 Honda Formula 1 engine deal. Under Monisha’s helm, Sauber had agreed to become Honda’s second F1 team. However, McLaren’s struggles with the Honda power unit, worried Vasseur. As a result, he pushed for Sauber to increase its collaboration with Ferrari instead.

Vasseur said, “I joined on July 17 at 9am, and the meeting [about Honda] was at 10am. For me it was important. It is never easy to change the engine supplier first, but Honda was not in very good shape. Plus, and probably most important for me, we were linked to McLaren for the gearbox with absolutely no internal resources to do our own one. I was convinced, as I had some contacts at McLaren, that they would do their best to leave [Honda]. So I could not be in a position to risk that. Imagine today if I had to request the Honda gearbox from McLaren? It would be an absolute nightmare. Being in the process of working on our 2018 car, we were not able to postpone the decision.”

Subsequently, Sauber agreed to renew with Ferrari. The new deal resulted in the team being granted the use of the current-specification engines instead of year-old designs. The  partnership was strengthened when Ferrari’s sister brand Alfa Romeo signed on as its title sponsor. As a bonus, Ferrari’s Formula 2 champion protege Charles Leclerc took the second 2018 race seat alongside Marcus Ericsson.

Frederic Vasseur jumped to Sauber after walking away from a senior role at Renault. He felt that his long term strategic vision was not shared by managing director Cyril Abiteboul. The Frenchman insisted that he had no regrets about his Renault stint. He admitted that he had unfinished business in F1 given his huge success as ASM/ART Grand Prix boss in junior racing.

Vasseur said,”I spent the last 27 years of my life on track and you want to succeed. You don’t want to finish like this. But it is nothing to do with revenge or something like this. I was always looking for the good project for me in F1 and I think [Sauber] was perfect for me. I didn’t want to say that Renault wasn’t a good one. But I had some troubles to fit with the system, so it is much better for me to leave and to stop because I have some other projects in my life. And I stopped. I was quite happy to have a break – even if after six months, the break was a bit too long! My wife pushed me to find something else, and said: ‘don’t stay at home anymore’. Then we started to discuss with Sauber. The discussion was a good one, the project was a good one because it was much more fitting with my expectations and the projects I had at the beginning of my career.”