Latest2 July 2025

From Swiss titles to World Championship dominance to F1 winner

Looking back on 55 years of Sauber Motorsport

by Jack Phillips
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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.

The success persuaded Mercedes to entrust Sauber with its stars – three-pointed and up-and-coming. The development programme of drivers meant Michael Schumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Manuel Reuter, Karl Wendlinger and the like came through under the watchful eye of the Jochen Mass and other legends inside the reborn Silver Arrows.

Le Mans victory followed in 1989, having skipped 1988 because it wasn't a championship round. Times change.

With Mercedes-Benz sated by back-to-back world titles, and Group C rule changes afoot, Sauber took the leap into Formula 1 in 1992. Ford, BMW and Alfa Romeo, Red Bull, too, have courted and claimed Sauber to represent them over the course of the past 30 years, including winning the Canadian Grand Prix in 2008.

From 2026 Audi will be added to that list, led by ex-Ferrari man Mattia Binotto and ex-Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, while retaining the experienced Nico Hülkenberg and 2024 FIA F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto as drivers. The latter clocked up his first points in F1 at the Austrian Grand Prix.

As that project ramps up, Bicester Motion will be a vital component because it will be the base for the Sauber Motorsport Technology Centre.  

From Swiss titles to World Championship dominance to F1 winner