2016 Sauber F1 Team - Ferrari

[ESPImperium]

Sauber also has one of the best CFD computing powers in the business thanks to the BMW days

I doubt it. That was 6 years ago, probably 7 when BMW cut investment.

True. 2010 & 2011 BMW left Sauber with an upgraded Albert III CFD facility. It was eclipsed in 2012 when Wirth left Marussia with what was regarded as the best CFD cluster in F1 then. Since then Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull now have the joint best as they operate with the maximum allowable by the regs. Ferrari are just behind, not by much, they will join those guys this year once they switch over to their new CFD facility in their new F1 factory in the August shut down.

Red Bull have given Toro Rosso their old CFD/Simulator cluster as they have just upgraded their full CFD/Simulator cluster as they use a integrated solution to maximise their potential. This is what Prodromu is doing at McLaren right now. Its increasingly more important to have a CFD/Simulator cluster for chassis maximisation and how quickly you can get new parts tested virtually. The Simulator facility is what Sauber lack, they don't have one, even Manor has a Simulator, Sauber are the only team in F1 who simply don't have one, and don't have the £25m to build one (and a wellness suite) going on the Lotus (now Renault) plans from when they got theirs in 2012 and the £8m that you would need to put it in the factory in a unused/under utilised or redeployed area.

It shows the disparity to the haves and Sauber these days. Id recon that the Simulator could be worth as much as a second of a lap as you can quickly optimize the set up before you go to a track and also get the best aero parts on to the car from using your CFD to its optimal and efficiently using your Tunnel to verify. Sauber, not having a Simulator don't get the best updated on the car straight out the box.

Sauber didn't let Audi have the tunnel as much this winter, they allowed them 4 days and not the 5 they usually gave them, this has resulted in a 20% loss in finance to the team, it was rumoured that Sauber got as much as €45m from Audi, so a €7.5m reduction is gonna hurt to a team with a budget of around €88m (on my 2014 figures). And with the inclusion of a bloody strong Haas and Manor being 'like a rocket on the straights' I think Sauber will struggle to have a good season this year. I can see nothing but doom and gloom unless a takeover by BMW/Alfa or McLaren/Honda can be worked out.

[FW17]

Albert3, with 4224 cores with 8448 GBytes of memory had a peak compute power of 57,7 TFlops, (50.700.000.000.000 arithmetic operations per second). Sauber no longer use Albert 2 or 3 and have much less powerful computers as CFD is limited in the regulations.

Regulations limit teams to 30 TFlops if no wind tunnel is being used.


Sauber should have got that sim, cash is tight but they should have spent that $5million

[Raleigh]

Sad to say but I think Sauber is finished, their only hope is a buyout of the team.

Realistically Manor has a pretty good chance of beating them, and that would mean they finished 11th in both 2013 and 2016, that would cost Sauber their column one prize money for 2017.

Alfa Romeo, here's hoping.

[ME4ME]

Realistically Manor has a pretty good chance of beating them, and that would mean they finished 11th in both 2013 and 2016, that would cost Sauber their column one prize money for 2017.

Alfa Romeo, here's hoping.

I don't think Sauber will be beaten by Manor, but good point none the less. If Ferrari / Alfa Romeo is serious about taking over Sauber, it would be in their advantage to enable Sauber to continue development in order to secure future FOM-money.

[Raleigh]

Ah, what am I talking about, had it in my head Sauber was 11th in 2014 but of course Sauber was 10th and Caterham 11th.

So even if Manor beat them that would be the first time Sauber has finished outside top 10 in standings, column 1 prize money is safe until at least 2018.

[Cold Fussion]

Sauber also has one of the best CFD computing powers in the business thanks to the BMW days

How does this make any sense if they are limited to 30 TF? 30 TF is very cheap these days, in the region or 100k for the super computer, far less if you can significantly GPU accelerate. The only differentiation can be in the tools.

[ESPImperium]

Im sure they still use Albert III, but they rent out the spare capacity to various other motorsports projects that are non F1 . However they can only do this for in effect 8 weeks worth a year. The finance they get from this is only a tenth of what they get from the tunnel. I did hear that they got almost a third of their money from a private Suisse hospital last year as they used Albert III for 3 weeks of folding capacity to help for R&D.

Im pretty sure the €40m that BMW spent on upgrading Albert III was pointless. When the CFD is limited now to 30TF, they should try and sell it off and go for a smaller solution and get a simulator, they should have bloody bought the old Caterham simulator that was sold in a private sale for £1.2m with all the software (rFactor based) and all its associated servers. The guy who bought it now rents it out for £4,000 a hour for driver training for potential young F1 starts. I did hear that Marcus Ericsson spent 4 days at the end of last year learning the tracks that he never drove on that Caterham never made at the end of 2014 in order to prepare him for those tracks. Manor managed to get their simulator back last year, however it only started running in December once they managed to re-assemble it and put in a MR03B chassis into it as they didn't have a simulator last year due to the fact they didn't have a old chassis to place in it, as they only had two as the Bianchi chassis was in such bad shape after the crash, and no one wanted to use it for moral grounds.

Sauber have lacked investment for many a year, id even say that back when BMW had it, they preferred drivers to real world test than go to a simulator, McLaren and Red Bull saw the simulator advantage. It took until 2012 for Ferrari to get their simulator built and a further year for De La Rosa to base line the thing, a fact that still amazes me. Simulators are such a massive part of F1 now, and it is now showing that with the lack of one, Sauber will fall back further. The team need investment, they need either a Haas business model type buy out to happen or a manufacturer to spend €250m+ a year on it and give the team 3 years to get up to speed. I hope they team survives, but i also hope the guys there keep their jobs.

[mep]

guys, that CFD computer discussion is a bit lame because Sauber just got a new CFD computer last year:

http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/forme ... rcomputer/

[lio007]

According to a source from motorsport-magazin.com Tim Malyon has left the team after only a few months.

http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/forme ... nieur-weg/

[PlatinumZealot]

Sauber, it is time to scrape together whatever money you have left and head over to Ferrari with a shopping list.

[Manoah2u]

Sauber again late with payments - despite Kaltenborn (who wasn't present @ Russian GP) stating that 'should not happen anymore'.

Starting to wonder whether they'll even be able to participate @ Spanish GP.
So sad to see this long-running and respectable team has turned in such a pile of cr*p thanks to Kaltenborn.
I can't grasp to understand how mister Sauber still has her running the team.

I don't know how REAL serious Ferrari [FIAT] is about having an Alfa-Romeo F1 team, but if they're not fast, Sauber is gone before they are able to take them over.
However i seriously doubt they're interested in having Alfa-Romeo F1 team located in Schwitzerland. Faenza would make a lot more sense.

Their only option could be that rich Russian Billionaire - Boris Rotenberg - that wants to have his own F1 team. Sirotkin @ Renault is his result with SMP Racing.

[efuloni]

According to Rafael Lopes, an important brazilian F1 blogger, Marcus Ericson confessed to Monisha that he intentionally crashed into Nasr yesterday. He claims having a " source very close" to Sauber.

Link, in portuguese:

http://globoesporte.globo.com/blogs/esp ... -nasr.html

[Sniffit]

Why would he sacrifice his career like that? It makes no sense what so ever.

[efuloni]

Seems unlikely to me too.

[Phil]

I just watched the post-race interview of both Nasr and Ericsson. It's really sad - the team is financially struggling and yet the drivers have no sense to follow a direct team-order that is there to ensure that they better they chances of securing points and positions. This applies to both Ericsson and Nasr. They need to function as a TEAM, if there is any hope of at least reaching their potential and what is realistically achievable.