The twin-keel car that took Sauber to new heights

After the initial promise of its Mercedes-powered Formula 1 debut had initially subsided, the Sauber name became intrinsically linked to midfield obscurity.

Often failing to rouse F1's commenters and pundits from their stupor of ennui, Sauber settled into a pattern of delivering strong early results in a season, before then fading out into the midfield as its reliability and pragmatic approach was rarely tempered with a strong development path.

Although heavily backed by Red Bull and Petronas at the time, Sauber found breaking into the points an increasingly difficult prospect as it approached the new millennium. After the year 2000, both Pedro Diniz and Mika Salo decided to leave the team - the former electing to waive his driving career to become a shareholder in Prost, as the latter joined up with Toyota to spend a year trundling around Paul Ricard in the test-hack TF101; presumably, that was a far more tantalising prospect than spending another year at Sauber.

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Unluckily for the departing duo, who had managed six points between them in 2000 (all courtesy of Salo as Diniz floundered), Sauber had a car in the works for 2001 that transcended the midfield - along with a selection of works teams - as the engineers at Hinwil finally found a way to make the most of the Ferrari powerplants in the back.

In addition, 2001 was the season in which Sauber got over its identity crisis and briefly forged a new reputation as a breeding ground for talented younger drivers. Nick Heidfeld was extricated from the towering inferno that engulfed the Prost team - which resulted in Peugeot's departure - and welcomed into a more neutral environment. Having had to battle flaring tempers and flaming engines in his rookie season, Heidfeld relished the prospect of a more familial atmosphere.

The choice for the second seat courted controversy. Although free agents Alex Wurz and Ricardo Zonta were on the market, and Red Bull junior team chief Helmut Marko wanted to manoeuvre Enrique Bernoldi into the drive, team principal Peter Sauber received a phone call from Jenson Button's manager David Robertson - who asked if the Swiss outfit would consider giving one of his Formula Renault proteges a trial run...

"I don't think that Peter Sauber remembers why he gave Kimi Raikkonen the chance to test," says Alfa Romeo team manager Beat Zehnder, then performing the same duties at Sauber. "Normally as a team you've been approached like a dozen times a week, 'I've got this young kid, he's very talented', blah blah blah. And as a Formula 1 team, you would say no under normal circumstances. We cannot recall why Peter gave Kimi a chance."

PLUS: The battle to get Raikkonen on the F1 grid

But, after Raikkonen impressed at Mugello, Sauber signed him to the second seat - against the FIA's protestations as the Finn had raced in just 23 single-seater events in his short career. Eventually, the governing body conceded that the Finnish rookie was on a four-race probation period.

"Before his very first race in Melbourne, like five minutes before the pitlane opened, everyone was looking for Kimi because we couldn't find him. He'd been having a nap underneath the table!" Beat Zehnder

Meanwhile, the 2001 Sauber was that year's surprise package thanks to an under-the-radar innovation. In truth, the twin-keel suspension set-up that Sauber became known for was originally debuted on the 2000 C19 car, but its minimalist approach to the notion of scoring points meant that few considered the design. Under the technical guidance of F1 journeyman designer Sergio Rinland, Sauber expanded on the twin-keel design for 2001's C20.

"[The twin keel] was an aero decision," Rinland recalls, "and it allowed us - together with the design of the front wing and the hole in the middle and shadowplate - to have much better flow underneath the car. By the time the air reached the diffuser it had a lot more energy in it than it would with a centre keel, where a lot of dirty stuff in the front means that by the time the air gets to the back, it's dire.

"It was an evolution. If you look at the Williams FW11, the suspension pickup points were bolted on the outside, as was the Sauber the year before I came. So we already had that sort of geometry. What we did with the C20 was rather than have the suspension bolted to the outside of the monocoque, the monocoque had to be higher so we had to bring down the attachment points."

Sauber's clean-up also involved hacking a significant amount of weight out of the overall package, meaning that it could use the new twin-keel lower wishbone mounting points to position ballast, shifting some of the weight distribution to the front.

"The other big advantage of that car compared to the previous car was that, although it had the right weight distribution for the tyres, it was 60kg lighter!" adds Rinland. "We had a big lump of tungsten in the front that allowed us to have the right weight distribution, as the front tyres needed a lot of weight.

"If a car is on the weight limit, there's nothing you can do - the big lump of weight is at the back and it's the engine and gearbox. In the keel, the car was designed to have something like 20-30kg of tungsten underneath the drivers' legs. It was designed for that, and it was the first time we had full carbon suspension and the first time they had titanium uprights, so it was much lighter than the previous year."

With those improvements, and the attention spent on loading the front tyres correctly, the incoming duo of Heidfeld and Raikkonen found that the C20 was a dream to handle. But after a falling-out, Rinland was given his marching orders by Sauber at the start of the year, and was promptly snapped up by Tom Walkinshaw at Arrows.

Heidfeld recalls the first test of the new car, in which Sauber journeyed to Ferrari's Fiorano circuit, and was surprised by the immediately obvious merits of his latest chariot.

"It was clear straight away that we would make a huge leap forward," Heidfeld says. "Remember, we were on Fiorano, I believe was the first test we had, which might already indicate why the car was was good. I don't know myself how much really of Ferrari was in it, but obviously there was a connection, with Ferrari, also on the engines.

"The good thing is that I drove the previous year's Sauber for a test as well. So I could compare not only to the Prost, but also for the Sauber of the previous year. And it felt like a huge step.

"[In the] corners as well, there was one thing that helped massively, which was that we already had a system that was helping us under braking on engine braking - not to lock the wheels, although, perhaps not as sophisticated as now!

"Even as in the base setting [the car] was working quite well. I remember it was a fun car to drive. Unpredictability is shit, but the car was relatively predictable and you could just play with it a lot more. There was the Prost where you were more like a passenger and trying to react to things that were happening, but the Sauber you could just place, plan and enjoy."

With a revised paint scheme, ditching the famous yellow Red Bull nose-cone as Credit Suisse came on board with a white version, Sauber arrived in Melbourne with optimism - and departed having claimed its best-ever start to an F1 season, with a sprinkling of help from the stewards' office.

"[The Sauber] was relatively predictable and you could just play with it a lot more. In the Prost you were more like a passenger and trying to react to things that were happening, but the Sauber you could just place, plan and enjoy" Nick Heidfeld

Ironically enough Bernoldi, who had been crowbarred into an Arrows drive by Red Bull at Pedro de la Rosa's expense, took a spin on his second lap and hit the wall on the run to Turn 3. Heidfeld, under attack from Olivier Panis and Jos Verstappen behind him, was overwhelmed by the pair and was relegated to 10th place - but Panis and Verstappen were alleged to have passed under yellow flags.

Sauber took its case to the stewards - and both drivers were slapped with a 25-second penalty. Heidfeld was promoted to fourth come the end of the race, while Raikkonen was elevated to a remarkable sixth place on his debut.

After the furore over Raikkonen's signing, the famously-laconic youngster had been in the mix all weekend - placing eighth in second practice to firmly silence his critics. For many, the experience of a first F1 race would have been punctuated by anxiety-fuelled pangs of nausea - but Raikkonen was typically laid-back.

"There is this story," Zehnder recalls, "and it's actually true, that before his very first race in Melbourne, like five or seven minutes before the pitlane opened, everyone was looking for Kimi because we couldn't find him. He'd been having a nap underneath the table. I said 'hey Kimi, come on, seven minutes, you have to go out for reconnaissance laps', and then he said 'yeah OK, give me another two minutes!'

"After the race, I went to the stewards and I said you have to look at I think Panis overtook Nick under yellow. Kimi left the track in the evening, and then he was promoted to P6. I called him and said, 'hey mate, congratulations, very first point for your very first Formula 1 race!' But then he said, 'yeah, but there's still five in front of me...' It was a very special year."

Heidfeld also called Raikkonen "a good team-mate to have; what I particularly liked was there was no bullshit", and Australia's showing suggested that Sauber had made the right choices to favour youth over experience.

Sauber's weekend in Malaysia was considerably more concise, as Raikkonen barely got out of his grid slot having been plagued with a driveshaft issue while Heidfeld's race was similarly truncated, becoming one of many cars to slide off as Sepang was hit with a sudden downpour. Perhaps the team was saving the heroics for the following round.

Brazil's race in 2001 was memorable for myriad reasons, where Juan Pablo Montoya's lead and participation was eradicated by Verstappen's errant Arrows, while David Coulthard passed Michael Schumacher into Turn 1 to claim the lead - and the victory. Heidfeld, meanwhile, prevailed in a race that was turned on its head by rain at middle-distance, claiming third place for his first F1 podium - and Sauber's first appearance on the rostrum since the famously dramatic 1998 Belgian Grand Prix.

Having been among the points-paying positions for the majority of the race, Heidfeld cleared Jarno Trulli in the late stages of the race, then compounded Jordan's misery by collecting third as Heinz-Harald Frentzen's electrics packed up.

The impressive form continued; Raikkonen bagged two fourth places in Austria and Canada, while Heidfeld began to forge a reputation as a quick and reliable points-scorer, with designs on securing Mika Hakkinen's vacant McLaren seat - before he was beaten to the drive by his younger team-mate.

The C20 proved to be Sauber's high-water mark as an independent team - and its eventual haul of 21 points helped the squad to a surprise fourth in the constructors' championship. Although the operation's BMW takeover five years later brought it into new territory at the front, 2001 was a season that continues to live long in the team's memory.

The twin-keel C20 had truly put the team on an even keel.