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Sauber
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Sauber is a Swiss constructor of racing cars for sportscar racing and Formula One.
Their best results in Formula One were six third place finishes and two front row starts. The team's most successful season was 2001 when they finished fourth in the constructors' championship. During its history in Formula One, Sauber never scored a race win, pole position, or fastest lap.
The company, previously independent, is now owned by BMW and is known as BMW Sauber.
Sports cars
Since the 1970s, Peter Sauber built sports cars.
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Encyclopedia
Sauber is a Swiss constructor of racing cars for sportscar racing and Formula One.
Their best results in Formula One were six third place finishes and two front row starts. The team's most successful season was 2001 when they finished fourth in the constructors' championship. During its history in Formula One, Sauber never scored a race win, pole position, or fastest lap.
The company, previously independent, is now owned by BMW and is known as BMW Sauber.
Sports cars
Since the 1970s, Peter Sauber built sports cars. After using turbocharged Mercedes V8 engines in the 1980s, his team became the official factory team of Mercedes-Benz, reviving the Silver Arrow legend. They won the 24 hours of Le Mans and the World Sportscar Championship (1989 and 1990), competing against Jaguar and Porsche. Amongst others, drivers like, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Karl Wendlinger, Jochen Mass, Jean-Louis Schlesser and Mauro Baldi raced for Sauber.
Sauber participated in a number of other racing series before its involvement in Formula One, such as the Swiss and International Sports cars championships and the 24 hours of Le Mans. The first Sauber car C1 was built in 1970. Sauber, in partnership with Mercedes, won the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1989 and the world sports car championship in 1989 and 1990 with the Sauber C9.
Formula One
The Mercedes Era
The 'turbo era' of Formula One ended with the 1988 Formula One season. The 1.5 litre turbocharged engines were phased out in favour of normally aspirated 3.5 litre engines. A massive demand for engine suppliers and a constant influx of new teams saw car manufacturers like Subaru, Porsche and Lamborghini enter Formula One as engine suppliers and sometimes buying out existing teams. Other projects never progressed beyond design studies, such as one carried out by Simtek for BMW. It was a turbulent time that led to the withdrawal of many small teams and even more famous marques such as Brabham and Lotus.
A planned Mercedes collaboration with Sauber to enter their own Formula One team was shelved, although behind closed doors Mercedes continued to fund Sauber's Formula One project. The team was to be powered by V10 Ilmor engines in a chassis dubbed the C12, a continuation of Sauber's naming policy from sports car construction (the 'C' was a reference to Peter Sauber's wife Christine). It was to be piloted by Jyrki Jarvilehto (J.J. Lehto) and Karl Wendlinger.
The car's racing debut took place in the first race of the 1993 Formula One World Championship, in South Africa. The car was soon turning heads not only for its sharp FW14-like lines and striking black livery but its impressive performance, claiming fifth place, (Two points under the scoring system at the time) on its grand prix debut. Despite this impressive entrance to the grand prix scene, over the remainder of the season the team rarely saw the finish line due to unreliability and racing accidents. However, they proved their form was not a flash in the pan recording a slow stream of points finishes and rarely finishing outside the top ten when they actually completed a race distance. Despite not achieving a podium, they ended the season with twelve points, seventh out of the thirteen original entries.
The team went into the 1994 season as Sauber Mercedes, now officially Mercedes' works team with a new car in the Sauber C13 and the Ilmor engine rebadged the Mercedes 3.5 V10. New team Pacific Grand Prix Ltd took a customer supply of more dated Ilmor units. Between seasons Lehto had signed to Mild Seven Benetton Ford. Former Sauber sports car driver Heinz Harald Frentzen took up the role as Karl Wendlinger's team mate.
Early signs showed the team were, rather disappointingly, delivering similar performances to the previous year, scoring a small tally of points in the opening rounds. The season took a turn for the worse when, at the race following the tragic deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the San Marino Grand Prix Wendlinger was seriously injured in a crash in practice for the Monaco Grand Prix. He suffered serious head injuries and was sidelined for the rest of the season, replaced by Andrea de Cesaris and a returning Lehto who had been replaced at Benetton after injury complications.
It is interesting to note that the Wendlinger accident is a pivotal moment in Formula One history, as the incident that, with the death of Ayrton Senna, later prompted the mandatory implementation of head protection for drivers in the form of high cockpit sides. Sauber voluntarily pioneered prototypes of these to protect their drivers.
They would finish the season with the same points tally as the previous year but finished only eighth out of the fourteen original entrants. Mercedes were disastisfied with the progress and left the team at the end of the year, enticed by an offer from the McLaren team, who were still looking for a new works deal since Honda withdrew from the sport. The partnership would see Team McLaren Mercedes take their first win in 1997 and both titles in 1998 but left Sauber to pick up the works Ford engine deal from Benetton.
The Ford Era
The 1995 season and Sauber C14 marked the beginning of a ten year sponsorship deal with energy drink giants Red Bull. In fact entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz had purchased a majority share in the team and Fritz Kaiser joined as commercial director. They landed a factory supply of Ford Zetec R V8s. The 1995 season saw the return of Karl Wendlinger partnering Heinz Harald Frentzen. Unfortunately the Austrian's serious accident in 1994 seemed to have taken a lot out of his driving potential and he was replaced after two races by rookie Jean-Christophe Boullion.
The season, for Frentzen at least, went surprisingly well. The team finished on a record eighteen points despite the under-performing Ford engine and Jean-Christophe Bouillon, who was again dropped allowing Wendlinger to make his final F1 appearance. They also climbed back up to 7th in the constructor's championship.
1995 also saw Petronas become Sauber's presenting sponsor. They renewed their association in 2007.
1996 saw Sauber's worst Formula One season in terms of points despite a promising driver lineup in Heinz Harald Frentzen and Johnny Herbert, a revised C15 entrant and a new V10 powerplant from Ford. Despite again holding seventh spot on a shrinking list of constructors they only scored 11 points and had not impressed for much of the season. For the next season they announced a customer deal to receive Ferrari V10 engines while they worked with new sponsors Petronas to construct their own engines. Unfortunately, due to a major economic crash in Asia the engines were never completed.
The Ferrari Era
Sauber used Ferrari designed engines (from 1997 to 2005) and gearboxes built by Sauber Petronas Engineering, a company founded for the sole purpose of building these engines, that were nearly identical to the ones used by Ferrari. Sauber licenced nearly every legally licensable part from Ferrari and even had several Ferrari engineers on staff. Many pointed out suspicious similarities between Ferrari and Sauber chassis, but no formal accusations were ever made (FIA rules require each team to design their own chassis).
In 2001 Sauber brought a virtually unknown and very inexperienced Kimi Räikkönen (who went on to win 2007 Drivers Championship with Ferrari) into Formula One, despite the protests of a few drivers and influential members of the FIA, including Max Mosley, that he would pose a danger to other drivers. His performances that year (and in the years to come), however, more than vindicated their decision. In 2004 Sauber spent a large sum of money on a new wind tunnel at Hinwil, and a high performance supercomputer (called Albert) to help refine the aerodynamics of their cars. The state-of-the-art infrastructure Sauber has built up is one aspect that attracted BMW Motorsport to Sauber.
In its later years, Sauber's links with Ferrari became weaker. They sided with the non-Ferrari teams over planned rule changes at the end of the 2004 season and also joined up with GPWC (which BMW are now involved with). Then they decided to switch to Michelin tyres, while Ferrari continued to use Bridgestones. BMW ownership commenced from January 1 2006. Sauber's final grand prix came in China 2005, with Massa scoring a welcome sixth place to round off the team's history. Sauber departed F1 with six third places and two front row starts their best results. Amongst notable Sauber drivers were Jean Alesi, 2008 Formula One championship runner-up Felipe Massa, Johnny Herbert and 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, who raced for the team in its final season. Two former Sauber drivers drove for the new BMW Sauber team in 2006, Nick Heidfeld who was a Sauber driver from 2001-2003 and Canadian Jacques Villeneuve who drove for the team in 2005.
Complete Formula One results
(key) (results in bold indicate pole position)
BMW-Sauber
The team was renamed BMW Sauber for 2006 after being bought by BMW.
External links
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