With the goofy Formula 1 season in full swing, it’s been an interesting week in terms of speculation about driver movement, and Alfa Romeo aka Sauber has been fairly and right in the middle of it all.
While it was announced earlier this week that Kimi Raikkonen would retire from Formula 1 at the end of this season, there were also rumors in the media that the time for the other Sauber driver, Antonio Giovinazzi, may have run out.
It seems likely that Valtteri Bottas will replace Raikkonen in the Hinwil roster as he gives way to George Russell to support Lewis Hamilton in the current world champions, but fascinatingly, it’s another Mercedes-listed driver and the current Formula E world champion Nyck de Vries, whose name seems to be in the mix to unite Bottas in 2022.
It would seem strange to a lot of people if this turned out to be true based on the whole Ferrari collaboration, but maybe not everything is what it seems in the entire Ferrari / Alfa Romeo / Sauber partnership.
To understand the basis of Sauber’s relationship with Alfa Romeo, we need to recall 2017 when Sauber confirmed its intention to end its PU supply relationship with Ferrari by the end of this season and use the Honda units from 2018.
As a last-ditch effort to keep Sauber’s business going, Ferrari made them a better deal, a more commercial one that not only offered better value than the year-long stalled development units they were received in delivering up-to-date PUs as well the commercial sweetener of offering a deal to put Exor-FCA’s own Alfa Romeo brand as the title sponsor, and Sauber promptly announced that they would be withdrawing their Honda options and sticking with their current PU supplier.
Even so, Ferrari has no ownership or ownership interest in Sauber, and while they may be using a Ferrari PU and other components in their car, the deal is purely commercial.
For any Ferrari-powered customer team, the last two years would have been at least testing, with what seemed to be at face value in 2019 appeared to be a strong PU choice that was reduced to the ridicule of the grid in 2020, with the claw – back to meager profits that could blame them for evaluating various PU and tech partners, including Mercedes.
Even though Sauber entered Formula 1 in 1993, its title engine supplier was Mercedes, but it is known in the paddock that Swedish Daimler boss Ola Kallenius and Sauber owner Finn Rausing have a good relationship, as does Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and Sauber boss Frederic Vasseur, so that a possible technical partnership between Sauber and Mercedes only seems natural in many ways.
It is also possible that Mercedes has decided that despite existing technical partnerships with Williams and Aston Martin, perhaps developing a junior team along the lines of the Red Bull / Torro Rosso / Alpha Tauri model could serve them well in the future with questions of the Juggling F1 seats and managing their talent.
Or maybe this is all just an unfounded rumor, and the Alfa Romeo / Ferrari deal will remain the status quo at Sauber for the time being.
It’s a silly time of year, after all.
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The post Tech Draft: Sauber will Alfa Romeo give up in favor of Mercedes? first appeared on monter-une-startup.
