Nasr urges Sauber to put future talks on hold

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Felipe Nasr wants Sauber to wait until after the final race of the season before focusing on his future, following the departure of his main sponsor.

Banco do Brasil will no longer sponsor Sauber in 2017, with team principal Monisha Kaltenborn confirming the news on Friday. When asked what the impact of the bank's withdrawal would have on his hopes to retain his seat amid links between Pascal Wehrlein and Sauber, Nasr said he will not focus on the matter this weekend.

"Well, I haven’t got anything yet," Nasr said. "The negotiations are still going on, that’s the most important. My head is here this weekend, I cannot think about future now. We have tenth place to confirm this weekend so we can’t lose our heads yet on other things, we’re not focused on other things. We need a strong race here to finally celebrate those two points."

Asked if it is a distraction for him to be discussing his future during a race weekend, Nasr replied: "No.

"I’m confident I’ve been doing the best job here on track, delivering the results I needed, the team needed. We knew these two points were available so we need to consolidate them here. That’s why I don’t want nobody, myself, the team, anybody else, to be distracted on anything else to make sure we guarantee this tenth place this weekend.

"On Monday we can talk about it."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.