Salo: Doubts Sauber's Giovinazzi choice

Mika Salo is not sure Sauber has made the right choice for 2019.

The former F1 driver was commenting on the news that the Swiss team has ousted Marcus Ericsson - who is staying in the reserve role - and replaced him for next year with Ferrari junior Antonio Giovinazzi.

Many have hailed the move as a triumph of talent over Ericsson's pay-driver dollars and links to the Sauber ownership.

"I'm not really surprised, but I wanted Ericsson to continue," Salo told C More broadcaster. "I'm sorry that he lost his place."

He said a question mark lingers over Italian Giovinazzi after his one-off performances replacing injured Pascal Wehrlein last year.

"I don't know any more about him, but those few performances were pretty unfortunate," Salo said. "He broke a lot of cars.

"He can probably race well as it was a difficult situation for him. Perhaps he wasn't ready and now he is," he added.

But Salo said the deal does make sense for other reasons. "It looks as though they wanted a young driver to learn alongside Kimi," said the Finn.

"And for Sauber you can see that they are working closely with Ferrari. The car is being developed in the same direction as Ferrari to keep improving the results."

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