If you bought Sauber?

[The Chicane]

What would you do if you had the money and bought the Sauber F1 Team, they are clearly the backmarkers these days and have since fallen from their midfield spot which they occupied for many years.

If you bought the team what would your plan be on improving their form, management, identity, drivers etc.

[mario]

What would you do if you had the money and bought the Sauber F1 Team, they are clearly the backmarkers these days and have since fallen from their midfield spot which they occupied for many years.

If you bought the team what would your plan be on improving their form, management, identity, drivers etc.

I guess that one inevitable question would be whether they should consider going down the same route as Haas has taken and aim to set up a relationship with another team to buy more components in off the shelf, assuming that would be possible to arrange.

It does seem as if the public mood has begin to shift towards being more receptive of customer cars, and we have seen with Haas that they are managing to do OK. It may give Sauber a chance of stabilising their financial situation in the short to medium term in the hope that, in the longer term, Liberty Media may move towards a franchise model (which they have occasionally floated the idea of implementing after 2020) which may put them on a more secure financial footing.

The other hope is that they might be able to exploit the tensions between McLaren and Honda in order to persuade Honda to inject more capital into their team - if things become so bitter that Honda and McLaren split altogether, that might give Sauber a chance of angling for a position as a works Honda team.

Still, it is hard to see what areas they could target - part of the problem is that, although Peter Sauber did his best to stabilise the team and save it from oblivion when BMW walked away, neither he nor Kaltenborn could stem the loss of their best designers to other teams (James Key was probably one of the bigger losses for the team, whilst Toet's retirement in recent years was another sizeable blow).

It is, to some extents, compounded by their base of operations given that a number of engineers with families are not keen on moving to Hinwil, and of course the current financial problems the team has means that they can't afford to pay a premium to attract people there. Perhaps, thinking of their deal with Honda, they could take advantage of Honda's enthusiasm for rotating their staff around different technical teams to broaden their skills by offering placements to Honda's staff - still, the issue seems to be finding that designer who has that real spark of inspiration in the way that Key did.

[AustralianStig]

I'd hire Giedo van der Garde.

[Wallio]

I'd have to change the name of the cars as my wife is an irrationally jealous person and the chassis being named after another woman would set her off.

I also would pull out of F1 and return the team to sports cars in the privateer LMP1 class.

[mario]

I'd have to change the name of the cars as my wife is an irrationally jealous person and the chassis being named after another woman would set her off.

I also would pull out of F1 and return the team to sports cars in the privateer LMP1 class.

Would it really work out that well to go back to sportscar racing these days?

Kolles has announced that, after the 6 Hours race at the Nurburgring, he will be pulling out of the WEC - it means that, for the latter half of this season, the privateer LMP1 class will temporarily cease to exist altogether. Now, Perinn claims that they have sold two cars to one customer: Ginetta are looking at customers, but currently have no confirmed sales.

In that environment, the privateer field does not have a great strength in depth - maybe a handful of teams at best - and, in the current environment, there are questions about the long term financial sustainability of that class. If you ended up in the sort of situation Rebellion did, where they were effectively competing against nobody, is that really sustainable for the long term?

[William Hunt]

I would put Charles Leclerc and Luca Ghiotto in the car, swap Honda for Mercedes engine and to please the engine supplier I would give George Russell a couple of tests

[Wallio]

It'd be a push. Far less competition (for now), but since there's no need to develop far less costs.

Plus with only what? 4 factory LMP1s a podium is not out of the question thanks to attrition.

[William Hunt]

I wish we had more attrition in F1 nowadays, it created more uncertainty on the results, and I wish there was more tyre degredation this year and most of all a budget cap
F1 is basically a race between 3 to 4 cars this year and well it was a race between 2 cars last season

[Wallio]

I wish we had more attrition in F1 nowadays, it created more uncertainty on the results, and I wish there was more tyre degredation this year and most of all a budget cap
F1 is basically a race between 3 to 4 cars this year and well it was a race between 2 cars last season

To be fair that describes 50+ of the 67 years of F1.

[mario]

It'd be a push. Far less competition (for now), but since there's no need to develop far less costs.

Plus with only what? 4 factory LMP1s a podium is not out of the question thanks to attrition.

It's true that development costs are likely to be lower, but on the flip side potential income is also likely to be relatively meagre by comparison - not that long before they left, Audi were publicly complaining that the ACO had done very little to make the WEC more commercially attractive to potential sponsors, leaving them shouldering the brunt of the costs.

Equally, although the potential for the occasional podium is there, it's worth remembering that Rebellion Racing picked up two podium finishes last year, yet they still ultimately decided that it was not financially viable to remain in the LMP1 class.

The problem is that, even if the LMP1 privateer class is not that expensive, it is still quite a bit more expensive than the LMP2 class, and those cars are still very fast. In the Le Mans test, the fastest LMP2 car was hitting a 3m28s lap - that is only a second off what Rebellion managed last year, and far faster than the ByKolles entry.

The talk is that, come qualifying for the race, they could potentially be down in the 3m26s, possibly even 3m25s - at that point, you are talking about times which would put them ahead of what Rebellion could manage, which was why some spectators were talking about the LMP2 cars potentially taking a podium finish or, quite possibly, even overall victory at Le Mans this year.

With the current LMP2 class now being close to, or potentially faster than, the privateer LMP1 cars, it is eroding the incentive to compete in the privateer LMP1 class when you could potentially be just as successful in the LMP2 class at far less cost.

[Wallio]

which was why some spectators were talking about the LMP2 cars potentially taking a podium finish or, quite possibly, even overall victory at Le Mans this year.

Not to ignore the rest of your post, but this bit here is rather exciting for me. RNG do your thing!

[William Hunt]

I wish we had more attrition in F1 nowadays, it created more uncertainty on the results, and I wish there was more tyre degredation this year and most of all a budget cap
F1 is basically a race between 3 to 4 cars this year and well it was a race between 2 cars last season

To be fair that describes 50+ of the 67 years of F1.

Yes but we never had a budget cap, if we had one many years ago that would have saved a lot of teams who were outspending themselves to stay alive and to try to compete with bigger teams.
We urgently need a budget cap if we want to see new teams in F1 and if we want teams like Force India (will they still be there next year? Rumour has it David Brabham might take over the team) and Sauber to survive long term
The distribution of money in F1 is also very unfair, teams should be able to compete on a level playing field

If you consider the budget Force India is actually the best team in F1 if you make the ratio between budget and performance