Vasseur: Sauber is “much more flexible” than Renault

Ranked ahead Toro Rosso in the Manufacturers' Championship before the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix (November 9-11), Clean is the team that made the most progress between the 2017 and 2018 seasons. At the 25th anniversary of the Swiss team, 12 months earlier, Sauber was only in last place with a tiny five points. In 2018, it is in eighth position with 36 units.

An important development which coincided with the thunderous debut of Charles Leclerc en Formula 1, but also with the arrival of Frédéric Vasseur as Team Director in the summer of 2017. The former boss of ART Grand Prix had at the time abandoned his role as Competition Director at Renault, less than a year after his appointment. In an interview published on the official F1 website, Frédéric Vasseur wanted to return to the reasons for the failure with the French team.

“I think that there was not a precise idea of ​​the definitions of each person’s roles”, he indicates, referring to the organization chart at the time. If Frédéric Vasseur was officially appointed Director of the competition, Cyril Abiteboul also worked as Managing Director. No replacement has been found since the departure of Frédéric Vasseur.

" Honestly, I feel much more in my comfort zone at Sauber, because it's more or less a team of the same size as the business I was leading before. It’s much more flexible”, specifies Frédéric Vasseur.

He would like to point out that he remained on good terms with the Losange staff. "I'm not complaining about Renault, I was aware of the internal politics before going there and I also made a few mistakes of my own.

Today, I am satisfied because I have maintained a good relationship with each member of Renault and we often take planes together. Everything is going well on my side, but probably I joined Renault when there was not a good dynamic. And so I stopped the fees”, humbly explains Frédéric Vasseur.

The more human size of Sauber clearly seems to please the French director. « I don't have all the amenities around me that I could benefit from at Renault, but we have a lot more flexibility (in operation. Ed.) and the budget is reasonable. We still need to improve this aspect because the objective is to move up the hierarchy and we have to increase the budget, but we will achieve it. »