Every year, each team is convinced they can make progress compared to what they achieved in the previous season… This is the magic of F1
While Sauber has had a challenging decade in Formula 1, team principal, Fred Vasseur, evidences the team’s determination to stop at nothing to regain fighting form and demonstrate its full potential. Since joining the team, he has made numerous changes to its structure, operations, and strategy. We recently had the opportunity to put some questions to the Frenchman and he was candid about the team’s approach.
RE: How has your journey been with Sauber to date?
‘I came to make significant changes and, when I started with Sauber in 2017, we were P10 on the grid. Despite the circumstances when I joined, I didn’t underestimate the inertia a team with the right direction can have in Formula 1.
‘Of course, the teams are set up to react to technical challenges very quickly but, if you want to make changes to the structure of the team and the personnel, operations and so on, things are often very slow. This is sometimes to do with things like gardening leave, which safeguards the technical insight that personnel carry with them when they transfer from one team to another. Very often, when we identify someone to join our team, they will participate between six and 18 months later, and their influence on the car will be two or three seasons later still.
‘You can have the budget available, but this might only come true for a short while. From the external point of view, it is strange because it seems that Formula 1 is very agile, but this is only at the trackside and in the technical output of these teams. In the long-term view, when
