Sauber Motorsport

Sauber was a swiss constructor of racing 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 sports car championship, competing against Jaguar and Porsche. Among others, drivers like Michael Schumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Karl Wendlinger, Jochen Mass, Jean-Louis Schlesser and Mauro Baldi raced for Sauber.

In 1993, Sauber entered F1.

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.

Sauber entered Formula One for the first time in 1993. It had a successful start, with driver JJ Lehto finishing in fifth position in Sauber's debut race. However, it was not a sign of times to come. Sauber was never able to consistently challenge the bigger teams. Its most successful season was 2002 when it finished fourth in the Constructors' Championship. The rest of the time, however, Sauber cars were more likely to be closer to the back of the field than the front.

Giancarlo Fisichella driving for the Sauber Formula One team at the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis in 2004

From the mid-1990s Sauber had close ties with Ferrari. Sauber used Ferrari designed engines and gearboxes built by Sauber Petronas Engineering, a company founded for the sole purpose of building these engines, that are nearly identical to the ones used by Ferrari. Sauber licences nearly every legally licensable part from Ferrari and even has several Ferrari engineers on staff. Many have pointed out suspicious similarities between Ferrari and Sauber chassis, but no formal accusations have ever been made (FIA rules require each team to design their own chassis).

In 2001 Sauber brought a virtually unknown and very inexperienced Kimi Räikkönen 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 had 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 had been becoming weaker. They sided with the non-Ferrari teams over planned rule changes at the end of the 2004 season and also have joined up with GPWC (which BMW are now involved with). Then they decided to switch to Michelin tyres, while Ferrari still use Bridgestones. BMW ownership commences from January 1st 2006. Sauber's final grand prix came in China 2005, Felipe 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, Johnny Herbert and 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, who raced for the team in its final season.Two former Sauber drivers,will however be driving in 2006 for the new BMW team, German Nick Heidfeld who was a driver from 2001-2003 and Canadian Jacques Villeneuve who drove for the team in 2005.

The team was renamed BMW Sauber for 2006.

External Links

http://www.sauber-petronas.com/en/home/index.php - Official website