It has been rumored that the Sauber F1 Team are seeking out a new engine supplier for the 2018 season, looking to move away from the Ferrari power units that they have been using for the past seven seasons. Honda has emerged as the team’s likely choice, but is this the right choice?
It’s quite understandable that the team would want to ditch Ferrari, considering they aren’t even being provided with the current season’s power unit, but instead the same units they ran last season. It’s common knowledge that when you are ordering engines from one of the top teams in Formula One, you will be paying top dollar. These are dollars that the Swiss outfit quite frankly doesn’t have the money for, considering they were on the brink of financial collapse just last year.
When you look at the current engine suppliers in Formula One, you have Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Honda. Honda has become the team’s strongest option, with team management even admitting that the pair have had discussions. But are they the best option?
Naturally, Mercedes isn’t really a valid option for Sauber at the moment. As with Ferrari, the price is just too big. Frankly it’s quite shocking that Manor was able to stick with them for as long as they did. When you are dealing a constructor that has won the World Constructors’ Championship title for three years running, it’s inevitable that their engine supply will cost you an arm and a leg.
With Mercedes ruled out, the Renault option doesn’t look much better either. Renault was probably at a low a couple of seasons ago when Red Bull was threatening to abandon the supplier, but they’ve bounced back since introducing their own works team and the engine performance is there. The only issue is the two Red Bull teams. Despite Red Bull’s power unit wearing the TAG Heuer badge, it is very much a Renault engine. With Toro Rosso also hopping back onboard the Renault train, you now have one massive company (Red Bull) running two teams with Renault engines.
This gives Red Bull and Toro Rosso the priority. The fact of the matter is that Renault are simply going to push Sauber to the side, since Red Bull is the one with all of the money. At the end of the day, priority for engine upgrades, engine testing, engine evaluation and all of that is given to the team with the most money. This is already happening to Sauber with Ferrari right now. Since Haas came into the sport, they have had priority over Sauber.
This is exactly why Honda is a prime candidate to supply Sauber with power units for 2018. When you are a small team, you need to go to a small supplier. Big suppliers always have bigger clients than you and you will never have the priority and will destined to stay at the bottom. If Sauber were to get power units from Honda, they would only have to share attention with McLaren. Naturally, McLaren would have priority over Sauber, but the Swiss team would be a lot higher up the ladder.
And Honda’s… less than perfect performance isn’t a bad thing for Sauber either. Likely it means that they can get power units a much lower price and there is a lot of room to grow. Having a customer team would be good for Honda also because it would give them twice the amount of cars to experiment with, twice the analytics to review and twice the motivation to get some solid results in the seasons to come.
Sometimes people see being a small team as a disadvantage, but the small teams are the ones that innovate in the sport of Formula One. It takes a lot more effort to compete at the bottom of the field than it does to stay at the top and it’s a lot more rewarding for these small teams to pick up a position in the World Constructors’ Championship than it is for a top team to maintain the same position each season, making it seem like they’ve made no progress.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: without the small teams, Formula One would not be the sport that it is today. Let’s not forget what team got Mercedes interested in Formula One again after almost four decades; that’s right, Sauber. Sauber is the team that could help Honda finally get the performance that fans have been waiting many seasons to see. This makes a Sauber-Honda marriage the best option for both parties.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
