Sauber Motorsport is one of the ultimate success stories in racing. In Formula 1, where independents have come and gone and rebranded around them, Sauber has been a constant for more than three decades.
Before that, Sauber returned Mercedes-Benz to top-tier sports car racing and repaid the marque with the ultimate prize by winning Le Mans in 1989. And the World Sportscar Championship to boot, long before the season was out by winning all bar one race that year.
Sports cars were the bread and butter of a young Peter Sauber, and claiming the Swiss Sportscar Championship title was a preface to the many more that were to come. He christened his first sports car, a tube chassis frame bearing a Cosworth engine, ‘C1’ for his wife Christiane.
The C2, similar in looks to the Chevrons and Lolas of the time, was given a Cosworth BDA and things got progressively more and more serious. The C5 and double Targa Florio winner Herbie Müller secured the wild Interserie Championship and took the brand to Le Mans for the first time in 1976.
The C6, unleashed in 1982, offered the first glimpse of the Sauber that would rule the world, its general headlight shape surviving the entire Group C era. By the end of the decade, the C8 would win the 1000km of the Nürburgring as Kouros Racing and with the great Henri Pescarolo at the wheel.