Page 171 - Cool Britannia

Sauber are celebrating 25 years in Formula One this season. Peter Sauber founded Sauber Motorsport AG in the 1970’s, he designed his frst car in 1970 in the cellar of his parents house. He christened the car C1, the C was taken from his wife Christiane’s name and has been retained as a model signature for Sauber cars to this day.Sauber reached the heady heights of Formula One in 1993.They now have new owners in the form of Longbow Finance SA. Having never won a grand prix as an independent, the team was sold to BMW from 2006 to 2009 and only scored one victory. BMW pulled out at the end of the 2009 season. Leaving the team in an uncertain position until it was sold back to Peter Sauber. Monisha Kaltenborn had been a leading fgure since BMW’s withdrawal. Longbow’s involvement meant Pascal Picci took on Peters role as Chairman and President with Monisha remaining as team principal and CEO.During testing Sauber set a fastest lap time through Marcus Ericsson using ultra softs, this potentially puts them squarely in the midfeld group, although some say it was obtained on low fuel, which could still have them lagging behind even though they clocked up more miles than all the rest barring Mercedes and Ferrari at 1010 miles in the frst week.171