By alley - Aug 17, 2017, 12:16 PM ET

'Very disappointing’ to lose Sauber deal - Honda

Honda's head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa says the cancellation of the Japanese manufacturer's deal to supply Sauber with power units in 2018 is "very disappointing."

Sauber and Honda announced a power unit partnership at the Russian Grand Prix at the end of April, with the deal set to see Honda supplying a team other than McLaren for the first time since returning to F1 in 2015. However, following a change of ownership at Sauber and discussions over the terms of the deal, the team opted to cancel the collaboration and instead

signed a new contract with Ferrari

"Of course it is very disappointing," Hasegawa told RACER about the end of the Sauber deal. "Although it is a customer team program so it doesn't hurt our program very much, but we still expected to get the opportunity to get our engine running more. We would have got more data and been able to make comparisons, so it is very disappointing.

"More than that, on the practical side, we had to stop the preparation. So it is very bad."

And Hasegawa says he didn't have much of a warning before the deal was called off, with discussions being carried out by Honda's motorsport manager Masashi Yamamoto.

"I wasn't in the meetings, that was Yamamoto-san. Actually [Sauber technical director] Jorg Zander and I were in very good communication all the time, so we both didn't believe that we would have to stop this collaboration until the final moment."

With Honda enduring another tough season, new Sauber team principal Frederic Vasseur says uncertainty over its future with McLaren was also part of his thinking when it came to changing plans for 2018.

"The start of the discussion with Honda was eight months ago and the situation changed drastically on both sides," Vasseur said. "We reached a point that at one stage it was better for everybody to stop the discussions and we did it in a very fair way with Honda and I would like to thank them for the discussion we had. It was a good thing for me.

"We are in a quite tough situation in terms of pace and we need to have reference. On the Honda side, we don't know exactly what will happen with the McLaren deal. It's also a tricky situation for us."