Sauber was never on the brink of bankruptcy according to team principal Monisha Kaltenborn.
The outfit had reportedly failed to pay some of its suppliers and driver Nico Hulkenberg as it desperately searched for outside investment.
It finally announced that a trio of Russian companies had backed the Swiss team, but Kaltenborn insists had the deal not gone ahead, the team would still be around.
“We focused on getting our deal done. We’ve been working with these partners for a while,” she is quoted as saying.
“It wouldn’t be right for us to think that ‘if we don’t get this, we can’t survive’.
“We’ve gone through tough times before and we know we can survive.”
She added that this particular plan will enable them to secure their long-term future and make improvements, rather than purely securing their place in the grid.
“We had other options, clearly, but we felt that this was the best for the team. It’s just a question of do you want to just survive or sustainably stay here and sometime, sooner or later, make a step ahead again.
“That was our focus and we knew that if this deal came through in this way, we had that basis for the long term to really make our way up again.
“That’s what’s going to happen now.”
Discussion about this post