Sauber say relationship with Villeneuve is strained

Swiss Formula One team Sauber have admitted their relationship with driver Jacques Villeneuve is strained.

"The partnership between Jacques Villeneuve and Sauber Petronas is currently at a difficult point," team owner Peter Sauber told Reuters.

The 1997 world champion has failed to score points in any of the season's three races so far and was replaced by Felipe Massa during testing in Barcelona last week after posting the slowest time on Wednesday.

Villeneuve's best lap time of one minute 18.10 seconds was almost a second behind the next slowest driver Olivier Panis of Toyota.

Peter Sauber said the decision to switch drivers in Barcelona was taken on purely technical grounds.

"The objective of our test in Barcelona was to evaluate new aerodynamic components," he said. "Our times were so slow and inconsistent on Wednesday that the engineers were not certain about the cause."

Peter Sauber refused to say, however, if he was considering a more permanent change of driver.

"To keep from straining the relationship (with Villeneuve) any further, I prefer not to make any further comments at the moment," he said.

Many Swiss newspapers appear to have already written the 33-year-old Canadian off.

"It's clear that Sauber will be replacing Villeneuve," Zurich's Tages-Anzeiger said last weekend. "The only question is when and with whom?"