Highlights
Series
Explore
Unless something extraordinary happens, Sauber will end this season 10th in the constructors' championship for the third time in four years. It is comfortably the worst period in its F1 history, having never finished as low as 10th before 2014.
So when Frederic Vasseur stepped in to take over the running of F1's fifth oldest team from Monisha Kaltenborn earlier this year, he knew change was needed - and quickly. Sauber could not go on like this.
His first act was to dissolve the planned arrangement with Honda, and the significant investment and technical partnership that came with it. Given Honda's unstable relationship with McLaren, Vasseur was concerned the Japanese manufacturer could quit, leaving Sauber in the lurch. He signed a new deal with Ferrari, despite the relationship having become strained in the closing years of Kaltenborn's reign.
