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Peter Sauber established his company in 1970, in his native Switzerland. His first car was a VW-powered sports racer nicknamed the 'Cheesewedge' and he followed that with Group 6 cars powered by 2-litre Cosworth and BMW engines. It was all fairly low profile stuff because, for most of the 1970s, small-capacity sports car racing was not the stuff of headlines. Further, Sauber showed no inclination to build a single-seater (his first open-wheeler was his 1993 F1 car).
Sauber's breakthrough came in 1981 when he created a special version of the BMW M1 which was sold to Dieter Quester who ran it at Le Mans. A second car won the 1981 Nurburgring 1000 kms, driven by Hans Stuck and Nelson Piquet. That was the stuff of headlines and Sauber began to be taken seriously.
A 1982 Group C with a Cosworth DFL engine was underwritten by Walter Brun and entered as a Sauber 'works' car. Like everyone else who used the engine, however, Sauber was overwhelmed by the engine's vibration. In 1983, a BMW-engined Croup C car performed well, and then Sauber turned to a car with a turbocharged Mercedes-Benz engine. This caught the attention of the Mercedes-Benz factory which began to offer Sauber some measure of support.
By 1988 this support had increased to what amounted to Sauber becoming a covert works team and, that year, Sauber-Mercedes was runner-up to Jaguar in the Worlds Sports Prototype Championship of Teams. Sauber did even better in 1989, and took both the title and, crucially, won Le Mans.
Mercedes-Benz then felt that it could come out of hiding and enter its cars under its own name, but Sauber continued as a key element of the team. With the demise of sports car racing, Mercedes-Benz toyed with the idea of entering Formula One. When they finally decided not to, Sauber decided to go it alone.
Sauber had few options since he had a fully equipped and staffed factory and there really was not a lot else to do with them apart from Formula One, if he wished to remain in motor racing at the level he'd become used to. Mercedes-Benz has never been a company to let down faithful servants and when Sauber entered Formula One in 1993, it was with substantial financial and technical support for two years.
Naturally, Sauber did not enter F1 at the top, but it came in at the sharp end of the midfield group and performed impressively for a newcomer. In fact, it was the most impressive debut by a new team for many a long day.
When support from Mercedes-Benz came to its planned end, Sauber found life a lot harder. However help was at end in the shape of Ferrari. Having used ford power-plants for several seasons Sauber made a massive leap forward in 1997 when they switched to Ferrari power. The Ferrari V10, re-badged as Petronas, has seen the Swiss outfit move further and further up the field seeing them finish fourth in the championship in 2001.
Sadly in 2002 the Swiss outfit was unable to build on the progress made in 2001 and actually allowed itself to be overtaken by Renault. The team retained Nick Heidfeld for a second season and partnered him with Brazilian sensation Felipe Massa.
With both drivers in the points in Brazil things looked promising, while Heidfeld produced one of the drives of the season in Spain to finish fourth. Although the C21 looked great at the beginning of the season, by the end it was clearly struggling. The car featured an all-new gearbox, while the centre of gravity had been reduced and the weight (unballasted) significantly reduced, in comparison to its predecessor. As the season progressed however Sauber fell into the old trap of failing to develop the car and consequently paid the price.
Massa meanwhile could be brilliant or plain infuriating, his 'Latin' tactics not endearing him to his fellow drivers, including his team-mate, or his boss. Although the Brazilian is wild and exciting to watch he needs to calm down, unfortunately in the highly competitive, and vastly expensive, world of F1 no team can afford to nurture and mollycoddle its drivers, therefore it came as no real surprise when he was dropped at the end of the season.
Nick Heidfeld was retained for a third season to be joined by Sauber 'old boy' Heinz-Harald Frentzen. The driver partnership was strong and in early testing the C22 looked good.
After the first three races things were indeed looking good for the Swiss outfit, with point scores in Australia, Malaysia and Brazil, together with a fine fourth on the grid in Melbourne for Frentzen.
However, as the season progressed things got worse. The fact that the Michelin-shod teams had a clear edge was bad enough, but it was in the aerodynamic department that the C22 was 'all at sea'.
With the new much-hyped wind-tunnel not due to be on-line until early 2004 the Swiss outfit was already in trouble, then came a succession of engine failures from a (Ferrari) unit which hitherto hadn't missed a beat.
As its season deteriorated, other than for a sole point at the Nurburgring, the team started looking ahead to 2004 when the new wind-tunnel would be on-line and the relationship with Ferrari would strengthen, indeed there was talk of the Italian team supplying its Swiss 'allies' with the latest spec engine, and a gearbox to match.
In the madness that was the United States GP at Indianapolis, Frentzen and Heidfeld both scored points, with Heinz-Harald giving the Hinwil team its first podium since Brazil 2001 (Heidfeld), though the celebrations didn't last long. The following day the team announced that both drivers would be dropped in 2004 in favour of Fisichella and Massa.
The 2004 contender, the C23, was a conservative design, though Sauber preferred the word 'pragmatic'. The team wanted the car on track as early as possible in order that it could focus on reliability whilst the aerodynamics were to be 'fine-tuned' once the wind-tunnel went on-line.
In addition to using the latest spec Ferrari engine, the C23 also (as promised) had a Ferrari gearbox, though many regarded this as a canny, rather than magnanimous, move by the Maranello outfit.
The new state-of-the-art windtunnel finally went on-line in March, and almost immediately the team began to see results.
Although the Swiss outfit didn't equal its achievement in 2001, when it finished fourth in the constructors' championship, it did score a record number of points (34).
Furthermore, despite finishing sixth in the constructors' championship, 35 points behind multi-champions McLaren, it was comfortably ahead of the better funded, manufacturer owned, Jaguar and Toyota teams.
One of the team's true strengths in 2004 was reliability, with only three retirements due to mechanical problems. The Ferrari engine only failed once (Australia), which is pretty much what you'd expect, while only in the Monaco (Fisichella) and United States (Massa) Grands Prix, were the drivers involved in accidents.
As ever, Fisichella gave it his very best, and though there was no call from Ferrari, WilliamsF1 were extremely keen to sign him, only for the Italian to agree to a return to his former employers, Renault. Massa seems to have 'calmed' just a little, and for the most part kept his far more experineced teammate in check.
In the second half of the season, a time when the Swiss outfit usually falls behind, the team consistently scored points, finishing fourth and fifth at Spa, one of the most challenging tracks on the calendar. Although it didn't take up the option of Friday testing, Sauber was one of the most industrious teams when it came to testing throughout the year, a move which clearly paid off.
In mid-January, having cancelled its official launch in Kuala Lumpur, out of respect to the victims of the Asia tsunami, Sauber rolled-out the C24, complete with radical front wing, clearly a product of all those hours in the windtunnel. Sadly, the car never lived up to expectations, the main being a woeful lack of downforce.
Despite its much-publicized state-of-the-art windtunnel, the team was clearly badly affected by the (aerodynamic) regulations, not to mention a lack of funding, which, in turn, meant a lack of staff. The team was frustrated as it slipped further down the order. Whereas it had once been 'best of the rest', behind the premiership teams, it was now finding it hard to keep pace with Red Bull.
The situation wasn't helped by the early-season differences of opinion between team boss, Peter Sauber, and Jacques Villeneuve. That said, as he got used to the car, and got his way in having the car set up as he wished, the Canadian's performances improved, and the situation diffused. Teammate, Felipe Massa, quietly got on with the job, and it came as no surprise when Ferrari offered the Brazilian to partner Michael Schumacher in 2006.
One might have thought that once BMW announced its decision to purchase the Swiss outfit, things might improve, but they didn't. Though Mario Theissen has promised major changes, and will increase staffing levels - particularly when it comes to windtunnel work - Sauber's final days in F1 were mostly anonymous, the team finishing eighth in the Constructors' Championship, just 8 points ahead of Jordan. A sad end to the Swiss dream.
The Swiss team never grabbed the headlines, but then again it never get caught up in the political bullshit that so often drags the sport into the gutter. Instead Sauber and his men quietly get on with the job, one of the few teams that everyone had a soft spot for.
Its budget wouldn't pay the catering bill at Maranello, yet Sauber, for the most part, produced good point-scoring racing cars, quietly getting on with the job with typical Swiss efficiency.
And let's not forget that it was Peter Sauber who took the gamble and brought Kimi Raikkonen into F1.
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