How Sauber twice saved itself from the brink of extinction

When BMW made the sudden decision in the summer of 2009 to quit Formula 1 at the end of the season, the future of Sauber looked precarious. It would not be the only time in the decade to follow that deep uncertainty would linger around the halls of Hinwil.

As teams and manufacturers came and went from F1, Sauber was often left scrambling to try and stay afloat and keep racing. And yet through its fight for survival, time and time again, it managed to thrive and take the fight to F1's establishment, proving its importance within the category's modern tapestry.

After squandering its chance at a title bid in 2008 in order to try and be the pace-setting team with the new KERS systems through '09, BMW quickly found itself in a difficult spot.

PLUS: How BMW-Sauber blew its chance of title glory

The decision to run with air-cooled KERS instead of a fluid-cooled system backfired dramatically, the team running well off the pace of the frontrunners. It sat third-from-bottom in the constructors' standings entering the summer break with just eight points to its name, four of which came courtesy of Nick Heidfeld's second place in the rain-shortened Malaysian Grand Prix.

At a hastily-arranged press conference in Munich three days after the Hungarian Grand Prix, BMW announced its exit, saying it had been "unable to meet expectations in the current season". As appealing as KERS may have been as a marketing tool, that alone was not reason enough to keep funding the F1 programme.

As a search for a buyer began, the usual array of shysters and sharks circled. One such group was Qadbak Investments, led by now-convicted fraudster Russell King. BMW announced in September it had agreed a deal with the alleged Swiss-based foundation, only for the cracks in the deal to then appear.

"It was all fake," says Sauber's long-serving team manager, Beat Zehnder. "The party didn't exist. We lost our FIA entry, because there were the other new teams."

It left Sauber in true crisis mode. Not only was the team without a buyer, but it now didn't have a place on the grid for 2010, BMW's entry having been given to the Malaysia-led Lotus Racing operation. Williams was blocking a move to expand to 14 teams - Manor, Campos and US F1 were also set to join the field - putting the future of the Hinwil operation at real risk. Even if it could find a buyer, it had no guarantee of continuing in F1.

"We had to let go of about 180 people, some of the people I'd known them for 10 years, I knew their families" Beat Zehnder

At the end of November, BMW announced it had agreed to sell the team back to Peter Sauber, on the condition an entry was granted. One week later, Toyota announced its decision to quit F1 for 2010, allowing the FIA to hand the 13th entry to Sauber. The team was saved - but the struggle was just beginning.

"It was a massively difficult time, because we had to let go of about 180 people, going from a works team to a private team," remembers Zehnder. "Some of the people we had to let go, I'd known them for 10 years, I knew their families, and still I had to tell them: 'Sorry, there is no space for you any more'.

"It was a very difficult time. It was living from hand to mouth. The first year, if you look at the car, I think the only sponsor we had on the car was [tyre supplier] Bridgestone! I think we had no other sponsors. Somehow we managed."

Entered to the championship as 'BMW-Sauber Ferrari' in order to retain BMW's rights to television and commercial revenue, the team struggled to begin with. Not until round seven in Turkey (below) did Kamui Kobayashi score any points, but the team grew stronger as the year wore on, eventually finishing eighth in the standings, aided in part by Heidfeld's late-season return to the Sauber operation in place of Pedro de la Rosa.

Sergio Perez, 2010 GP2 runner-up, was picked up for '11, bringing with him an array of sponsors from Mexico that gave the team a financial shot in the arm - but it was hardly anything like the funding of the BMW heyday. In a reverse of the 2010 campaign, Perez and Kobayashi started strongly before tailing off as the year ended - but the team had an eye on 2012.

In a season widely regarded as the most open of the 21st century, yielding seven different winners in the first seven races, Sauber came close to taking the most sensational victory of the lot at a rain-soaked Sepang.

Perez impressed in qualifying to secure P9 on the grid before a masterstroke decision to pit for intermediate tyres at the end of the first lap catapulted him up the order. He managed to tail Ferrari's Fernando Alonso for the lead in the changeable conditions, closing up in the final stint.

Perez was reminded of the importance of a potential podium, followed by a mistake that caused him to run wide while just half a second behind Alonso with seven laps to go. It prompted rumours of collusion with Ferrari that Sauber was forced to deny. Perez ultimately came home second, scoring Sauber's first podium as an independent team since the 2003 United States Grand Prix.

It would not be the team's only trip to the podium that year. In only his second season, Perez proved his skills in tyre management as many of his rivals struggled, allowing him to also ascend the rostrum in Canada and Italy. Team-mate Kobayashi followed this up by taking third on merit in Japan, being the first home driver to stand on the Suzuka podium since 1990.

It all led Sauber to finish the year sixth in the constructors' championship, narrowly finishing behind the Mercedes works team. It was a mighty achievement for a team that was still running on a shoestring budget.

"[2012] was a huge boost for the team," says Zehnder. "We were fighting with Mercedes for P5 in the championship. This was a very nice, a very rewarding year, because for all the hard work we did, and being a small team with literally no money, this was a huge achievement."

Zehnder worked hard to unlock the operational strength of the Sauber team: "I'd been in the business for quite a long time. The first race we completed in South Africa, I think we'd been 27 people in total. I know how to work with the least amount of people at the track."

Sauber's efforts through 2012 had allowed it to sign highly-rated Nico Hulkenberg from Force India for the following season. With Perez moving up to McLaren, fellow Mexican Esteban Gutierrez took his place, maintaining the Telmex funding.

A tricky season followed. Alterations to Pirelli's tyres worked in Sauber's favour through the second half of the year, allowing Hulkenberg to go on a late-season run that lifted it to seventh in the standings. Gutierrez contributed just six of the 57 points scored by the team.

And then came 2014, and the rule change that, to quote Zehnder, "killed" Sauber. The long-serving V8 engines were discarded in favour of new V6 hybrid power units. They were more efficient, more marketable - and, for customer teams, much more expensive.

"The leasing fees of the engine was almost triple what we had compared to the V8," Zehnder says.

"At a time when you have no money, when it was extremely difficult for a private team to get sponsors - and then all of a sudden you have like €13-14 million more expenses on power units. We never were able to get this money. The V6 and the additional costs were factors that made life extremely difficult for us."

"When I arrived to the paddock area, Giedo van der Garde was there in my race suit, walking around and with all the press around. It was a very surreal experience" Marcus Ericsson

With money going towards the engine, there was less budget to develop the C33 car, which proved to be one of the weakest F1 products to come out of Hinwil. Combined with an unreliable and underpowered engine - something Ferrari would never accept blame for - it caused Sauber to slump to the back of the field. Gutierrez and Hulkenberg's replacement, Adrian Sutil, failed to muster a single point. Sauber ended the year 10th - behind Marussia - scoreless for the first time in its history.

It left the team in a desperate situation. Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn was left juggling a number of driver deals to try and keep the operation afloat. In late 2014, it announced Caterham's Marcus Ericsson would be signing for the following year, joined by GP2 driver Felipe Nasr. This was despite Sutil and reserve driver Giedo van der Garde claiming to hold deals to race for the team in 2015.

Ericsson signed to join Sauber before even visiting its factory, having sat out the final few races of 2014 when Caterham collapsed. The Swede was "super impressed" when he did eventually visit Hinwil, but noted, "there were not as many people working there as the big days when they were with BMW. There were some empty spaces there."

After a solid performance in pre-season testing, Sauber ventured to Australia hopeful of fighting for some points. But it faced a very different off-track fight before the weekend even started. Refusing to disappear after the team had reneged on its deal for 2015, van der Garde filed an international arbitration complaint over Sauber.

The Swiss Chambers' Arbitration Institution ruled in van der Garde's favour, and he then filed a case in Australia ahead of the first race of the season. The Australian court too ruled in van der Garde's favour, despite Sauber's appeals against the case and pleas it would be unsafe to let the Dutchman drive the car due to his lack of pre-season testing.

"We were trying, me, Felipe and everyone, to play it down and say we were just focusing on driving and everything, but for sure there were distractions with everything going on," recalls Ericsson. "Felipe and I went to court on the Thursday before going to the track. It was a very strange situation.

"On that Friday, when I arrived to the paddock area, Giedo van der Garde was there in my race suit, walking around and with all the press around. It was a very surreal experience."

After not taking part in opening practice over fears of a seizure of assets, Sauber hit the track with Ericsson and Nasr for FP2. Van der Garde issued a statement on the Saturday morning of the race giving up his right to race, with a settlement then being reached with the team.

While Nasr and Ericsson would both go on to finish the race in Australia with points - Nasr fifth, Ericsson eighth - the weekend was remembered as a sorry saga that summed up just how grave the situation was for Sauber. Following the closure of Caterham and amid Manor's struggles - both cars failing to qualify without turning a wheel - there were fears that one of F1's best-established teams could meet a similar fate. At times, even figures within the team itself thought the writing was on the wall.

"We were fighting simply to survive," says Zehnder (pictured below with Kaltenborn). "We had times where it was not so clear that we were going to make it for the next race. We couldn't, at one point, pay airlines, we couldn't pay hotels, we couldn't pay rental equipment at race tracks. I probably could say due to my long-term relationship with all my partners, we were able to keep on going.

"But it was hard, and more than once, we were struggling. We were not sure whether we could do the next race."

It naturally had an impact on the team's on-track fortunes.

"We didn't get the updates," says Ericsson. "We didn't produce enough spare parts and updates to keep up with the rest of the competition. That first race with the team in '15, the first part of that season, we were really competitive, and actually fighting - we even beat Red Bulls and things like that.

"But then we didn't update that car throughout that whole season. We had the same car, and then the year after was again a very similar car with very few updates. You could tell that the team was struggling to keep racing instead of trying to beat the competition.

"We were slipping back more and more, and struggled to keep up with the rest and the midfield. In 2016, we didn't score any points apart from Felipe in Brazil in that crazy rain race. That year was definitely a very tough one, because the team was struggling so much financially, and the car was just out of date so we couldn't keep up with the rest."

Nasr's two points in Brazil saved Sauber from the ignominy of finishing last in the constructors' championship, overtaking Manor at the penultimate race. But the bigger decision for the team's future had been taken that summer when, after more than 45 years in motorsport, Peter Sauber announced his exit.

"It was a very real threat that Sauber was going to go under and not be in Formula 1 or motorsports anymore. From the bottom, we managed to turn things around" Marcus Ericsson

A Swiss investment company known as Longbow Finance had bought the team in its entirety, marking the beginning of a new era for the operation. With reported links to the Swedish billionaires behind Tetra Pak and H&M, Longbow's presence meant the financial woes were eased immediately.

"With the new ownership, I wouldn't say all, but most of our difficulties vanished - and then we had to build up the team again," says Zehnder. "Not necessarily the race team, but the engineering, the design office, the aerodynamic department. From the summer in 2016, we started building up the team again."

It was a process that took time, but the relief led to a shift in the atmosphere at Hinwil.

"You could see in people's eyes that there was something to look forward to, that there wasn't this concern or stress about next week or the next race," says Ericsson. "It was more like 'now we're going to get back, now we're going to get strong again'. It was just a completely different atmosphere in the team after that happened, and people were believing again."

The 2017 season was one of transition for Sauber. Running year-old Ferrari engines, the team was rooted to the back of the field, scoring just five points as, for the first time, it finished last in the constructors' standings. CEO and team principal Monisha Kaltenborn left the team after 17 years amid a dispute with the owners over the running of the team, putting a planned partnership with Honda for 2018 at risk.

Talks between Honda and Sauber, now led by Frederic Vasseur, ultimately led to their deal being called off. Sauber swiftly announced it had secured a Ferrari engine supply from 2018 on a multi-year deal - crucially using the latest-specification power units. The Ferrari deal also paved the way for another partnership for Sauber.

At the behest of Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne, the Alfa Romeo name returned to F1 via a partial rebrand of Sauber, which became known as the 'Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team'. Ferrari's influence also allowed 2017 Formula 2 champion Charles Leclerc to secure a race seat with the team alongside Ericsson. For the first time since 2013, Sauber found itself with the means to properly compete.

Through 2018, it picked up 16 points finishes (Leclerc 10, Ericsson 6) - one more than it had through the previous four seasons combined. The team finished the year just 14 points shy of McLaren in the standings, and regularly featured near the front of the midfield. Ericsson qualified as high as sixth for the penultimate race of the year in Brazil.

"What made it special for me is that I was really part of a lot of the story, when the team was on a very downward spiral and struggling more and more, and almost got to a point where there were questions about whether we were even going to make the next race," Ericsson says with pride.

"I think it was a very real threat that Sauber was going to go under and not be in Formula 1 or motorsports anymore. From the bottom, we managed to turn things around, and get back up and have that strong year that we had in 2018, scoring a lot of points.

"I had some really strong performances - and also Charles of course. We even had some weekends where we qualified and raced as the best of the rest, best of the midfield, which I think was an incredible performance looking at where the team was only 12 months before.

"I think that that was really nice for me to be part of that, and see things from the bottom to getting back up in the top of the midfield."

Leclerc's emergence also marked a return to one of Sauber's greatest ideals: helping develop new talent. Michael Schumacher, Karl Wendlinger, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Nick Heidfeld, Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa and Robert Kubica had all previously cut their teeth with Sauber.

But for Zehnder, part of Sauber since 1987 and its F1 team manager since 1994, Leclerc stood out above them all.

"From his speed, he's Kimi Raikkonen, and from his working attitude, he's probably Michael [Schumacher]. Give him a good car, and he's going to be world champion, definitely" Beat Zehnder on Charles Leclerc

"We had a very special driver with a very special attitude," he says warmly. "I've never seen a driver like Charles before. It was again very rewarding for all the work we had, for all the difficult times we had to work with a kid again.

"I've always said that for me, from his speed, he's Kimi Raikkonen, and from his working attitude, he's probably Michael [Schumacher]. Give him a good car, and he's going to be world champion, definitely."

Ericsson was similarly impressed by Leclerc, and found his own stock rising by his performances against the Ferrari-bound youngster.

"I could tell straightaway that this guy is special," says Ericsson, now with Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar. "He's definitely helped me to show what kind of driver I am, and I think especially when he went on and the way he drove last year with Ferrari has also helped me, I think in a way."

It would be Ericsson's final season racing for Sauber, but he left for the US holding only good memories.

"It's definitely shaped me as a driver," he says. "I was there for four years. I think only two or three drivers have done more races than me for Sauber. It's not that common that one driver spends that amount of time in one team, especially not in Formula 1.

"I definitely felt like I learned a lot and it shaped me as a driver. Just the work ethic as well they have down there and how hard they work, it's definitely helped me."

Besides Leclerc and Ericsson's departures, more changes were afoot for 2019. The Sauber name disappeared completely as the team became Alfa Romeo Racing. Antonio Giovinazzi would be returning full-time after his two-race foray in 2017 - and another name from Sauber's past would also be back at Hinwil.

Seventeen years, 21 grand prix victories and one world championship since his last appearance for the team in 2001, Raikkonen was behind the wheel of a Sauber again. It was a plan Zehnder had been working on for some time, having always kept in close contact with the Finn.

"When he finished third at Silverstone in 2017 with Ferrari, he gave me a ride back in the private plane," Zehnder remembers. "Then we started talking about his future, and I said: 'Listen, if you don't want to drive for Ferrari any more, or if they dismiss you, then please contact me. I will make it possible. We'll find a way, if you're interested and you're motivated to come back to Sauber.' We always had talks about this over the years.

"When at Monza in 2018 Ferrari decided that they're going to go for Charles, we had immediate contact. We had a meeting which was the Tuesday after the race with Fred, Kimi, and myself.

"We basically did a contract within two hours. Well, a contract - we did an agreement, because Kimi doesn't read contracts!"

The return of a recent race winner to the Sauber operation proved that, even after its near-dices with extinction in the last decade, it is still one of F1's best-loved teams. Raikkonen eagerly signed a multi-year deal with the team, helping lead the rebranded Alfa Romeo Racing's charge through 2019 as it again emerged as a regular midfield point-scoring outfit.

Through all of the ups and downs Sauber has faced, it has never lost its strong resolve. At a time when motorsport and the world as a whole is braced for a difficult future in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that trait will be more important than ever.

"I think we can all see what this group of people can do," adds Ericsson. "The atmosphere and the way they are doing things in Hinwil is something very impressive. It's a lot of people from Switzerland in the team, and they feel proud to represent Sauber as a team.

"It is a bit different, because most F1 teams are in the UK, then Ferrari and Toro Rosso down in Italy. But then you have that team in Switzerland that is punching from below. I think that makes a bit of an 'us versus the world' sort of feeling. It's nice to see that it's going in the right direction again."

"Most F1 teams are in the UK, then Ferrari and Toro Rosso down in Italy. But then you have that team in Switzerland and that makes a bit of an 'us versus the world' sort of feeling" Marcus Ericsson

Zehnder has confidence the strengths of this little team from Switzerland that have served it so well can help it thrive in F1's post-COVID future.

"It depends very much on the budget cap, on the prize fund distribution - those are on the right way, on a better way than we've been since the last Concorde Agreement in 2012," says Zehnder.

"You should be able to operate as a team at zero cost. At the moment, this is not possible, and every owner of an F1 team, whether it's a car manufacturer or a private entity, they have to put in a lot of money. And it's too much, what they have to spend at the moment.

"Our hope with the budget cap and the more level playing field, I hope we can - and I think we can - play a top role in the business."