Peter Sauber
Encyclopedia
) is the team principal and owner of various motorsports teams, most visibly the eponymous Sauber Formula One
Sauber
Sauber F1 Team is a Swiss Formula One team. It was founded in the 1970s by Peter Sauber, who progressed through hillclimbing and the World Sportscar Championship to reach Formula One in 1993....
team.
Motorsport career
After being trained as an electricianElectrician
An electrician is a tradesman specializing in electrical wiring of buildings, stationary machines and related equipment. Electricians may be employed in the installation of new electrical components or the maintenance and repair of existing electrical infrastructure. Electricians may also...
Peter Sauber took the plunge into adult life by taking on a role as a car
Čar
Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...
salesman in Hinwil
Hinwil
Hinwil is a municipality in the district of Hinwil in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland.- History :The village Hinwil from which the later municipality took its name is first mentioned in 745 as Hunichinwilari, in a donation made by Beata and Landolt to the Abbey of Saint Gall...
, Switzerland. This was Sauber's first real association with the automobile and it proved to be the catalyst for his involvement in motor-racing.
Sauber's motorsport
Motorsport
Motorsport or motorsports is the group of sports which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles, whether for racing or non-racing competition...
connection was somewhat paradoxical, given that racing in his native land had been banned after the Le Mans
24 Hours of Le Mans
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the world's oldest sports car race in endurance racing, held annually since near the town of Le Mans, France. Commonly known as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, race teams have to balance speed against the cars' ability to run for 24 hours without sustaining...
tragedy of 1955
1955 Le Mans disaster
The 1955 Le Mans disaster occurred during the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race, when a crash caused large parts of racing car debris to fly into the crowd. The driver was killed, as were 83 spectators. A further 120 people were injured...
. That said, he still managed to compete in hillclimbing events in the Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Type 1, widely known as the Volkswagen Beetle or Volkswagen Bug, is an economy car produced by the German auto maker Volkswagen from 1938 until 2003...
he'd purchased and thus the foundations for his first project as a team owner were laid.
Team Sauber
After opting not to take on the family traffic light business, Peter built the Sauber C1 (the C stands for Christine, the name of Peter Sauber's wife) in his parents' basement. It was a car of tubular frame, powered by a 1-litre Ford Cosworth engine. He subsequently drove it to the 1970 Swiss hillclimbHillclimbing
Hillclimbing is a branch of motorsport in which drivers compete against the clock to complete an uphill course....
championship. It also remained in racing for ten years in the hands of other drivers, notably Friedrich Hürzeler, who took the 1974 crown in the car.
In 1971, Sauber handed over the drivers seat to Hans Kunis, who drove the new Sauber C2 model in the same series, as Peter himself had done so the year before.
Sauber had started to gain a portfolio of customers and in 1973, Sauber built three C3 spec chassis for different customers. Designed by Guy Boisson, the car was used predominantly in the Swiss Sports car Championship.
The C4 of 1975 heralded the first aluminium
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
chassis developed by the team, and Boisson was joined by Edy Wiss in designing it, and only one C4 was ever produced.
The most successful of the early Sauber cars, the C5 was used to great effect in conjunction with its 2 litre BMW
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...
engine—taking the 1976 Interserie Championship in the hands of Herbert Muller.
Being a group six sports car, the car was allowed to take part in the legendary Le Mans 24 heures race, and Sauber entered the C5 in both 1977 and 1978. In '77 the car led its class before retiring, with the same thing happening in '78.
1979 marked the end of Sauber's first foray into sports car building - and the start of preparing chassis for Lola F2 cars. The drivers finished 1-2-4 in the championship that year - one of them was Max Welti
Max Welti
Max Welti is a former Swiss racing driver. He was involved with F1 Team Sauber before becoming the principal of A1 Team Switzerland in 2005.-References:*...
, who subsequently joined the team as team manager.
In 1980, and 1981, Sauber and Wietl turned their attentions to developing BMW M1 sportscars, in the latter year it won the 1000km Nürburgring
1000km Nürburgring
The ADAC 1000 km Nürburgring is an endurance race for sports cars held on the Nürburgring in Germany and organized by the ADAC since 1953.- History :...
.
In 1982, with BASF sponsorship, Sauber returned to sports car racing. The C6 was the first car to be tested in a windtunnel by Sauber. It was during these tests that Sauber built up a strong relationship with Leo Ress, who would later become instrumental in the F1 project.
In 1985, the team's relationship with Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...
began. This sports car partnership culminated in November 1991 - having ignited the career of the legendary Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher is a German Formula One racing driver for the Mercedes GP team. Famous for his eleven-year spell with Ferrari, Schumacher is a seven-time World Champion and is widely regarded as the greatest F1 driver of all time...
and Sauber's very own protégé, Karl Wendlinger
Karl Wendlinger
Karl Wendlinger is an Austrian sportscar racing and former Formula One driver.- Mercedes Juniors :Wendlinger started his career in karting and in Formula Ford before entering the German Formula 3 Championship in 1988...
.
Formula One
Sauber now began to look seriously at launching an F1 team. In the summer of 1991 Harvey PostlethwaiteHarvey Postlethwaite
Harvey Postlethwaite was a British engineer and Technical Director of several Formula One teams during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of a heart attack in Spain while supervising the testing of the abortive Honda F1 project...
joined the team to design an F1 car and Mercedes funded a vast new factory at Hinwil
Hinwil
Hinwil is a municipality in the district of Hinwil in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland.- History :The village Hinwil from which the later municipality took its name is first mentioned in 745 as Hunichinwilari, in a donation made by Beata and Landolt to the Abbey of Saint Gall...
.
First Sauber Team (1991–2004)
In November 1991 Mercedes decided against direct involvement and so Sauber entered F1 by itself in 1993, with drivers JJ Lehto and Karl WendlingerKarl Wendlinger
Karl Wendlinger is an Austrian sportscar racing and former Formula One driver.- Mercedes Juniors :Wendlinger started his career in karting and in Formula Ford before entering the German Formula 3 Championship in 1988...
powered by engines built by Ilmor
Ilmor
Ilmor, founded by Mario Illien and Paul Morgan in November 1983, is a British independent high-performance autosport engineering company. With manufacturing based in Brixworth, Northamptonshire, and maintenance offices in Plymouth, Michigan, the company supplies engines and consultancy to the...
but rebadged as Saubers. Sauber did convince Mercedes to enter F1 in 1994 but a year later the German company did a deal with McLaren, leaving Sauber to become the Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
F1 works team. This was followed by a deal with the Malaysian oil company Petronas
Petronas
PETRONAS, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is a Malaysian oil and gas company that was founded on August 17, 1974. Wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia, the corporation is vested with the entire oil and gas resources in Malaysia and is entrusted with the responsibility of developing and...
in 1995 and the establishment of an engineering company called Sauber Petronas Engineering to design and build V10 engines. The company began buying old Ferrari
Ferrari
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947...
engines and rebadging them as Sauber Petronas V10s but the F1 engine program itself was scrapped in 1998. In recent years Sauber has been very successful with the team finishing fourth in the World Championship in 2001 and fifth in 2002 despite having a much smaller budget than many of its rivals. The team however never scored a race win.
The sale to BMW (2005–2009)
In June 2005, BMWBMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...
acquired the major shareholding stake in the Sauber team from Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse
The Credit Suisse Group AG is a Swiss multinational financial services company headquartered in Zurich, with more than 250 branches in Switzerland and operations in more than 50 countries.-History:...
, which owned more than 60% of the team from an annual deal Peter Sauber initiated in 1994 selling a majority stake of his team to his major sponsor. It was done with Peter Sauber's blessing, the team was known as BMW Sauber
BMW Sauber
BMW has been involved in Formula One in a number of capacities since the inauguration of the World Drivers' Championship in . The company entered occasional races in the 1950s and 1960s , before building the BMW M12/13 inline-four turbocharged engine in the 1980s...
and Peter took a background advisory role within it, retaining a 20% stake in the team.
Return to Peter Sauber (2009–present)
In July 2009, BMW announced its withdrawal from Formula One at the end of the season. Peter Sauber worked with BMW to develop a rescue package that will allow the team to continue in the sport without the manufacturer's backing. Qadbak Investments Ltd were thought to have purchased the team, but on 27 November 2009 it was announced that the Qadbak deal had fallen through and BMW had instead reached an agreement to sell the entire F1 operation back to Peter Sauber.This sale would only go ahead if the team was granted a place on the 2010 grid by the FIA. On 3 December 2009, the FIA announced it had confirmed Sauber's entry for the 2010 season had been granted, and Sauber regained ownership of the team.