When Peter Saubers first contact with racing took place he was a driver not a team owner. He started competing in races in 1967 at local events in Switzerland, the country he was born. After doing so for a while he tried to built up his own car on a VW Beetle base. And he had success which appeared when he won the Championship of the Formula Racing Car Club in 1969.

The next step was to build his own sports car out of an old Brabham of which he used engine, transmission and suspension parts. This car was the beginning of a naming convention, which he continued until today. He named the car C1 in relation to his wife Christine's first name. But it was the construction not the name who made him win the Swiss Championship in 1970.

The next steps of car constructions were the C2 to C5. With a C5 Herbert Müller won a race in the Interseries. That was in 1976.

In 1980 Hans Joachim Stuck (GER) and Nelson Piquet (BRA) won the 1000-Kilometers-Race on the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife race track with a BMW M1 sports car tuned and provided by Peter Sauber.

In the year 1982 he started to build a car which followed the regulations of the Sportsprototypes Group C. The car had a spectacular design and was powered by a Ford engine. It got the name C6.

The next year Sauber designed the C7 Sportsprototype which had a BMW engine.

But it was the year 1984 when a new era of Sauber cars began. Peter Sauber fitted his C8 with a Mercedes-Benz V8 engine with 5 litres cylinder capacity and two turbo-chargers. This engine was derived from a limousine engine. The following years saw an everlasting improvement of his car designs. He became supported by a famous partner: Mercedes-Benz.

In 1989 and 1990 his cars the C9 and the C11 "Silver Arrow" won the World Sportscar Championship for Group C Sportsprototypes. At this time the drivers were Jochen Mass (GER), Jean-Louis Schlesser (FRA) and Mauro Baldi (ITA). Peter Sauber and Mercedes-Benz decided to form a junior team with the best young German speaking drivers they could find at this time: Heinz-Harald Frentzen (GER), Michael Schumacher (GER) and Karl Wendlinger (AUT). These three were supported to make their way to Formula One finally, which they indeed made sooner or later. Their "driving instructors" were the experienced drivers like Jochen Mass. The juniors competed well and were soon as fast as their elder team mates.

In 1991 the Sportscar Championship which gained more and more public interest (I liked watching Sportsprototypes on TV more than Formula One) was a thorn in the ass of an ugly, little alien with the cover name "Bernie Ecclestone". He decided to cut the throat of this competitor series to his own Formula One Championship. The Sportscar Championship suffered due to this. In this year and the following Peter Sauber decided to go another way. In spring of 1992 he announced his participation in the Formula One Championship despite his long year companion Mercedes-Benz decided not to do so. But there was an experienced team ready to take new challenges and so the C12 was born, a pure Formula One monoposto.

After doing tests and developments in 1992 with his new engine provider Ilmor the first Grand Prix in 1993 at Kyalami/South Africa saw the debut of the C12 with Karl Wendlinger the old/new driver and team mate JJ Lehto (FIN). Karl Wendlinger spent in 1992 a season with the March Team and he performed well with the antiquated March F1 car. So he was first choice for Peter Sauber. At the race at Kyalami on March 14th JJ Lehto gained the first 2 points finishing 5th place. A certain rivalry between Karl Wendlinger and JJ Lehto led to an crash between them at the Loews corner during the Monaco Grand Prix. That day Peter Sauber was not as happy (maybe today he takes this with a sort of humour). In August he asked Heinz-Harald Frentzen to do some tests in the C12 and that was the beginning of the Formula One career of the third former "Sauber Junior Driver" (Michael Schumacher had his Grand Prix debut in 1991 already). The team took the 7th place in the Constructors Championship in 1993 with 12 points.

In 1994 Heinz-Harald Frentzen took over the seat of JJ Lehto and he performed excellently right from the beginning. In the same year the Ilmor engines were renamed to Mercedes-Benz because the company made their Formula One comeback after about 30 years through the backstage door by overtaking 25 percent of Ilmor. After the two deadly accidents of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna at the Imola Grand Prix a third nearly deadly accident shocked the team: Karl Wendlinger crashed into the walls in the so called Harbour Chicane in the free training session of the Monaco Grand Prix. He had severe injuries and gained his health slowly after waking up out of coma. The team was very depressed but after some Grand Prix it found its old performance again and Heinz-Harald Frentzen managed to qualify between the top six in the last races. In Estoril he was on 3rd position and was faster with his worn tyres as Jean Alesi in the Ferrari with almost new ones when a transmission failure stopped him! In Suzuka he qualified 3rd in front of Nigel Mansell in the Williams-Renault.. Peter Sauber's team earned 12 points during the season and had 8th position in the Constructors Championship. Certainly they had performed better if Karl Wendlinger had not had his accident. After some dispute Mercedes left the team and Peter Sauber had to search for a new engine supplier. In autumn he found Ford/Cosworth which was sent to the desert by Benetton.

But it was to late: the new C14 car was designed already for a V10 engine and the Ford V8 engine didn´t fit in properly. At the first races in the 1995 season the car was to slow, because there was an imbalance, engine and gearbox were too heavy and the engine had more than 70 horsepowers less than the Renault and Ferrari engines. The V8's advantage gasoline consumption and torque in relation to the V10 engines didn't exist anymore. But in a huge effort the team rebuilt the car piece by piece. The car got a new high nose, the fitting aerodynamic shape behind the nose, a new bottom and other sidepods. In the beginning of the year the distance to the top teams Benetton and Williams was about 4.5 seconds per lap, at the end of the season the distance was about 1.5 seconds. The team had found about 4 seconds per lap over all because the top teams meanwhile had moved 1 second further. At the end of the saison the Sauber Team ranked on 7th position of the Constructors Championship.

At the beginning of the 1996 season the situation seemed to look much more optimistic for the team. With Johnny Herbert (GB) a man, who won two Grand Prix in 1995, took over the cockpit of Karl Wendlinger, who despite of the fact, that Peter Sauber let him test and race in 1995, unfortunately couldn't compete anymore after his severe crash at Monaco. The team's constructor Leo Ress had designed a really delivering chassis. And Ford had brought their brandnew V10 engine. In the beginning of the season Heinz-Harald Frentzen judged the chassis to be 1.5 seconds faster than last year's. But there was a certain understeer in the car, which was lowered step by step during the season. But the big problem was the new Ford V10 Zetec-R engine: weak, unreliable and couldn't pushed to high rpm-levels. Despite of that fact in the Brazilian Grand Prix you could see the first duel between Frentzen and Schumacher because a weak engine is not as much as bad during a wet race. And after their pitstops Frentzen was pulling away from Schumacher. The rain was the great equalizer but you could see that Schumacher could accelerate faster out of the corners. There was a big lack of power and torque in a certain engine revolutions range. If Ford / Cosworth don´t try harder, then Jackie Stewart won't be too happy with this engine (my opinion!). There were rumours that the camshaft of the engine is driven by a chain. That's tech out of the stone age because there must be a lot of vibrations. At this time the other F1 engine manufacturers used gear drives for the camshaft. At the end of the season Cosworth brought new evolutions of the engine to every race but it was too late. The Sauber Team finished on 7th position in the constructors championship with 11 points. It was not a lucky season for the team due to a lot of retirements with engine failures or engine electronics failures. The next thing was, that Jackie Stewart made a deal with Ford. Due to his good connections as a represantative for Ford for many years he got the V10 engines exclusively for his new Formula One team in 1997. With all complaints about the engine a weak engine is much better than no one. Again the Sauber Team had no engine and they nearly had to use the old Ford V8 custom engines. But Peter Sauber found a much better solution. Together with the team's main sponsor Petronas, an Malaysian Government-directed oil-company he made a deal with Ferrari. The team bought 40 Ferrari V10 engines with the 1996 Suzuka specification. Sauber founded a engine department, which made a contract with the well-known Japanese engine-developer Osamu Goto, who was responsible for the Ferrari V12 and V10 engines of the last years. The engine was renamed to Petronas V10. Unfortunately Heinz-Harald Frentzen left the team after Frank Williams offered him a contract for 1997. As replacement and part of the engine deal the team could sign Nicola Larini (ITA), an experienced Formula One driver and test driver for Ferrari the last seven years. His last Formula One race was in 1994 at Imola and Monaco as replacement for the injured Jean Alesi. At Imola he gained the second position.

The 1997 start of the season at Melbourne was a little bit weird somehow. Eddie Irvine took out Villeneuve and Johnny Herbert with his Ferrari. Herbert had started from position 7 and had to retire. Nicola Larini took the seasons first point with rank 6. During the rest of the season Johnny Herbert mostly qualified between position 14 and 10. He gained all other 15 points out of 16 reached by the Team in 1997. The car and the engine were very reliable. There was just a single engine failure in all the races. Only the Benetton drivers drove more race kilometers during the season then the Sauber drivers. But somehow the development of the car stagnated. Another thing was the second driver. Nicola Larini was very fast but did not drive constantly. After five races he was changed against Ferrari testdriver Gianni Morbidelli. Morbidelli was a fast man too, but he needed time to get acquainted to the Sauber C16. Time the Team did not have. Unfortunately he broke his left arm when testing at Magny Cours and so he had to be replaced with Norberto Fontana the Argentinian testdriver of the Sauber Team. Again Fontana needed time to get acquaited to the car and he was unexperienced in Formula One races. None of these three drivers could support Johnny Herbert and the Team properly so the Team was a single driver team throughout the 1997 season. The Team ended the season on 7th rank in the Constructors Championship. For the 1998 season Peter Sauber signed an experienced driver to support Johnny Herbert. Jean Alesi should show his potential in the Swiss Team. A never seen event happened in autumn 1997: a driver of another team tested the Sauber C16. It eas Michael Schumacher who fulfilled a wish of Peter Sauber. His opinion about the C16 was mostly the same as Johnny Herbert's and he was surprised positively by the car.

Hint: If there are some mistakes in the text above then please correct me, the facts are all written out of my memory. But memory can be deceptive sometimes ;-)

Another hint: I´m a German, that means my English is sometimes very strange. But after ten glasses of whiskey (of course the Irish) I´m able to understand John Watson and Ben Edwards (must be the Spirit of Pure Malt which causes this effect). Please send me an email if you would consider some sentences to be rewritten.