The Swiss Peter Sauber founded the Sauber F1 Team. Sauber has been involved in motorsport since the 1970s, and first competed in F1 in 1993.

The team raced as an independent until the 2005 season when they were purchased by BMW. The team's first (and to date only) victory came in the 2008 Canadian GP. BMW become disillusioned with F1 pulling out at the end of the 2009 season. Peter Sauber purchased his old team and raced in the 2010 season, still using the BMW Sauber name, but using engines supplied by Ferrari.

Sauber Facts and Stats
 

The Sauber team's entry into F1 in 1993 came following a time of great change in the sport; turbo charged engines were banned after the 1988 season and such allowed several manufactures to offer engines to existing teams or create new teams, it was also a time when some established teams such as Lotus and Brabham left the sport.

In this period, Sauber began working with Mercedes and although a planned formal collaborative team was shelved, Mercedes continued to offer funding support to Sauber's F1 car project.

The team's first F1 race was the 1993 South African GP, drivers JJ Lehto and Karl Wendlinger were to struggle throughout the season with an unreliable car. Wendlinger and Lehto retired in nine races of the 16 race season, however, they did score some points including Lehto finishing in fifth at the team inaugural GP. Sauber ended the season in a credible seventh place out of thirteen original team entries.   

In 1994 Mercedes officially backed the team, the factory backed Sauber Mercedes could be expected to perform well, however, the team continued to struggle. JJ Lehto had left the team, replaced by Heinz Harald Frentzen. A poor start to the season was compounded at the Monaco GP; Wendlinger crashed heavily and suffered serious head injuries and he was replaced by Andrea de Cesaris. The team achieved the same points total as 1993, but were placed eighth. Mercedes were dissatisfied with the team performance, and induced by the prospect of working with McLaren left the team at the end of the season.

The withdrawal of Mercedes from Sauber left the team scrabbling somewhat for a replacement engine supplier for the 1995 season.  The team agreed terms with Ford. Sauber also entered into a long-term sponsorship relationship with the growing energy drinks company Red Bull, the founder of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz also purchased a majority share in the team. Wendlinger returned to the team at the start of the 1995 season, but was dropped after four races and replaced by Jean-Christophe Boullion. Boullion, performed poorly and was replaced by Wendlinger for the last two races of the season. Frentzen made the best of a poorly performing underpowered car finishing in the points in six races including a podium third place at the Italian GP. Frentzen ended the season in ninth place and the team returned to a modest but encouraging seventh in the constructors' championship.

British driver Johnny Herbert join Sauber in 1996, to race alongside Heinz Harald Frentzen, the chassis and engine were improved but other teams maintained their performance advantage. Sauber once again finished the season in seventh place, but with fewer points than in prior years.

In 1997 Sauber reverted to Ferrari engines in 1997, and the team worked very closely with the Italian manufacturer. Nevertheless, the team continued to struggle to compete with the top teams, suffering from frequent reliability issues and indifferent power and consequently few podium finishes was to be the norm. The team finished the constructors' in seventh, sixth, eighth and eighth in the next four years.

In 2001, results improved; the team recruited a young inexperienced Finnish driver Kimi Räikkönen, and together with his teammate, Nick Heilfeld propelled the team to a fourth place finish in the championship. (Kimi Räikkönen would later go on to win the 2007 Drivers Championship with Ferrari). In the four following years the team gradually moved away from such close links with Ferrari, the results deteriorated from the relative high of 2001, and by 2005 Sauber finished in a disappointing eight place. However, the team were investing large sums in building a wind tunnel and a high performance supercomputer. Such investment presented a potential new entrant to F1 with a platform from which to develop. BMW agreed to purchase a controlling interest in Sauber from the start of the 2006 season. The independent Sauber team's last race was the 2005 Chinese GP, Massa scored points with a sixth place finish. Only a romantic could suggest that Sauber had had a glorious F1 record, the team had invested heavily to achieve six third places and two front row starts.

BMW were risking a great deal in entering fully into F1, the manufacture had a long and very successful reputation in producing luxury sporty road cars, failure in F1 would be a bitter pill to swallow. 

BMW Sauber debuted in the 2006 season, Nick Heidfeld had joined from Williams and the 1997 World drivers' Champion Jacques Villeneuve renewed his existing Sauber contract. The team also hired a young Polish driver, Robert Kubica as a test driver.

The 'new' team was still based in Sauber's facilities in Switzerland, with the engine production remaining in Munich Germany. The cars changed their livery to a traditional BMW blue and white, regrettably the performance of the team, although improved, did not witness huge progress that might be expected with the financial and engineering backing of BMW.

Villeneuve scored the team's first points with a seventh place finish at the second race of 2006 season, the Malaysian GP. Villeneuve lacked form finishing in point scoring positions in just four of the first twelve races of the season. Kubica replaced Villeneuve at the Hungarian GP, because he was medically unfit resulting from an accident at the German GP, and then dropped in favour of the young Pole for the remainder of the season. Kubica managed one podium finish (Italy) in his six races of 2006. Heildfeld was a little more successful, finishing in the points in ten races including a Podium at the Hungarian GP. BMW Sauber finished the season in fifth place, but had less than half the number of points than the fourth placed team. 

Kubica had demonstrated his skills sufficiently well to retain his place along with Heidfeld for the 2007 season. Winter testing produced some very optimistic thoughts for the season, the new car had propelled the drivers to the top of the times sheets, however, the team principal Mario Theissen expressed his concerns that the car may be unreliable.

The pre-season testing proved to be an accurate indication of the improvement; Heidfeld finished fourteen races in point scoring positions including a second in Canada and a third in Hungary. His less experienced teammate Kubica also produced some strong performances finishing eleven races with points. Robert Kubica missed the US GP because he was medically unfit recovering from a spectacular crash in the Canadian GP. His place was taken by Sebastian Vettel, whom in finishing in 8th place, became the youngest driver to score a Formula One World Championship point. Heidfeld was fifth in the drivers' championship and Kubica sixth.  Whilst BMW Sauber had considerably improved, the team was still far behind the top two teams of 2007, Ferrari and McLaren. The McLaren team was disqualified from the constructors' championship in 2007 because of the spy gate scandal, consequently, BMW Sauber finished the season in an encouraging second place. 

The 2008 season is perhaps best characterised as a potential missed opportunity; the team started well and after seven races Kubica was leading the championship. However, at this point the team switched development to the 2009 car, and with other teams concentrating on 2008, BMW Sauber lost ground to be outpaced by Renault, Toyota and even Toro Rosso (who started the season as one of the slowest teams) by the end of the season. Nevertheless, Robert Kubica had a good season finishing in the points in 14 races with seven podiums including his and the team's first win. Incredibly the team's first win at the Canadian GP was also a one two finish with Nick Heidfeld taking second place. Heidfeld was outpointed by his teammate, but did have four second-place finishes and seven other point scoring races.

The team ended the 2008 season in third place in the constructors' championship and had closed the points gap between McLaren and Ferrari, however, to be the third best and be beaten by Mercedes supplied McLaren was starting to be a potential PR issue. BMW's participation in F1 is about a major car manufacturer illustrating its technical and performance brilliance, and consistently being beaten by its biggest competitor does not fit with any marketing strategy. The costs of participation must also be justified to shareholders, and financially F1 was becoming a financial liability for BMW.  

BMW Sauber targeted 2009 as a championship year, it was to be make or break season. Regrettably, it was soon apparent that the car was off the pace and results were very disappointing. After six races the team had scored 6 points, and were in a lowly eighth place of ten competing teams in the constructors' championship. The engineering team had worked on a number of upgrades to be installed on the car for the Turkish race and beyond; such were to include an improved regenerative braking system, (known as KERS) and a double diffuser. The KERS system could not be engineered to fit the car and after the British GP the team announced it was to stop further development of KERS. (This was once again a blow to the team's credibility, BMW were vocal supporters of the system and only Ferrari and Mercedes had perfected the technology. The track results continued to disappoint, and unsurprisingly BMW announced at the end July that they were pulling out of F1 at the end of the season.

BMW Sauber's 2009 season was indeed poor, with just two second place podiums and a poor 6th place in the constructors' it was understandable that BMW should be demoralised. It is harder to understand why the team with the financial and engineering resources of BMW struggled to produce a fast reliable car.

Peter Sauber, the teams founder, repurchase the team from BMW and agreed an engine supply from Ferrari. (Oddly, because of bureaucratic issues the name of the team did not change for the 2010 season, so the team continued as BMW Sauber, but without any involvement or parts from BMW, the team was often referred to as BMW Sauber Ferrari).

Sauber recruited the young and very talented Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi and Pedro de la Rosa for the 2010 season. Pedro was disappointing, being outpaced by his much less experienced teammate, he was replaced for the last five races of the season by Nick Heidfeld.

The 2010 season had a familiar feel for Sauber, promising much more than was delivered. After six races, the team were yet to finish in a point scoring position. Kobayashi managed a spirited tenth place at the Turkish GP to score the teams first points of the season. Kamui Kobayashi impressed many at the European GP in Valencia. The weekend started poorly, qualifying in eighteenth position. However, in the race he stayed on track when others pitted and was running in 3rd place for much of the race. In the closing stages he pitted for new tyres emerging in 9th, but he then drove magnificently to overtake Fernando Alonso and Sébastien Buemi for a 7th place finish.

The second half of the season gave more productive and consistent results; the drives of Kobayashi, Heidfeld and De la Rosa combined earned 44 points, giving the team 8th place in the constructor's championship. Kobayashi performed the teams season-best finish of 6th at the British Grand Prix.

Sauber are fortunate to retain Kobayashi for the 2011 season, he surely will be offered a drive in a more competitive team shortly, and F1 rookie Sergio Perez from Mexico who no doubt helped secure the sponsorship of Telmex joins him.

The grid is increasingly competitive, with the new teams keen to demonstrate that they are credible. Sauber has considerable experience, but sadly lack the experience of now to be a winning team, and it is easy to envisage that a smaller team beats the older much defeated warhorse in the 2011 season.

 

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