Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn said that the decision had been taken months ago because the outfit wanted to be able to push on with designing next seasons car with a known power unit concept.
Running the same specification as Ferrari, with such a big rule change to technical regulations going into next season, risked Sauber needing to make late revisions to its design if the Italian car manufacturer elected to overhaul its power unit.
Sauber's decision to use a 2016-specification engine means only Ferrari and Haas will use the outfit's 2017 power unit, a reduction compared to this season.
This is not the first time a F1 team using a year old Ferrari power units, Toro Rosso currently uses Ferrari's 2015-specification power units.
While the season before Manor Racing used 2014-specification power units for the 2015 F1 season.
In my opinion, this is a bit of a major surprise that the news has happen. But, with the big rule changes to technical regulations for next season it might be the right choice to use year old power units for 2017.
However, with using year old power units, the disadvantage could be 30bhp behind the 2017 spec and then some throughout the season just like for Toro Rosso for this season. They started well looking to fight for podiums for the first half of the season scoring 45 points, going into the second part of the season they only managed to score two points since the Belgium Grand Prix.
That means Sauber team needs to score points early going into 2017 to pay this gamble off.
No comments:
Post a Comment