The manufacturer tie-up that put Sauber on the map

If you'd predicted at the start of the 1980s that Sauber would win the Le Mans 24 Hours by the end of the decade, you'd have been laughed right out of the tiny town of Hinwil where the team, now racing as Alfa Romeo in Formula 1, is based to this day.

An operation run out of a British Leyland dealership had yet to make its mark on the international sportscar scene, but it was set on course for victory in the French enduro as much by luck as by judgement.

Team founder Peter Sauber was looking for a windtunnel in which to hone the aerodynamics of the latest in a line of prototypes dating back to the one-litre, Cosworth-engined C1 of 1970. Sauber approached Stuttgart University, only to be told that its links with Porsche precluded it from offering any help on the machine being built for the new Group C formula coming on stream in 1982. Instead, a friendly professor nudged him in the direction of Mercedes.

PP Sauber AG, as the company was then known, got the help it required from the car maker in 1981 as it developed the C6 Group C car in conjunction with bodywork specialist Seger + Hoffmann, with which it had built two Group 5 versions of the BMW M1 for that season. Within four years, a Sauber prototype would have a Mercedes engine in the back and another four years after that, in 1989, the team would score a 1-2 at the world's biggest sportscar race in the Silver Arrows livery of Mercedes-Benz.

Sauber's good fortune was that he found a group of like-minded racing enthusiasts when he went knocking at the door of Mercedes. The German manufacturer might have been sitting on the sidelines more than a quarter of a century on from its withdrawal from motor racing in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, but that didn't stop its engineers dreaming.

Not only did Sauber get to put the design of what became known as the SHS C6 in the Mercedes windtunnel, but the manufacturer's computers were brought into play to help with the calculation for the car's suspension geometry.

But most importantly, the approach also started the dialogue that resulted in a race version of the Merc M117 five-litre V8 in twin-turbo guise making it into the back of his C8 Group C car in 1985.

Mercedes knew all about the forthcoming Group C class, or at least that bunch of racing nuts did. They'd identified the M117 found in the SL road car range as the perfect base engine for a formula that placed strict limitations on fuel useage.

Leo Ress was one of the engineers that Sauber encountered at Mercedes. He would work on the suspension kinematics for the C6, then become a weekend warrior for the team and, eventually, join its payroll as chief designer.

"We were just a group of dreamers who believed that a low-revving, big-volume engine would be the most fuel-efficient way to go for Group C," remembers Ress. "Sauber used the Cosworth V8 in the C6 but we always had the V8 in the back of our heads."

There was, says long-time Sauber team manager Max Welti, a meeting of minds. The group of Mercedes engineers, which included engine research boss Hermann Hiereth, had the idea. Sauber would pick it up and run with it.

"I actually think Peter would have closed the team if Mercedes hadn't come on board - he did talk about doing that" Max Welti

The relationship between Sauber and Seger + Hoffmann broke down through the 1982 season, the two partners going their own way at its conclusion. Sauber produced a new car for 1983, the C7, around a tub drawn by Ress while he was on gardening leave before taking up a job at BMW.

The car, powered by the straight-six BMW M1 engine, finished ninth at Le Mans, the only non-Porsche 956 in the top 10. It was a worthy result used by the dominant marque of the early years of Group C in an advertising campaign. "Nobody's perfect" ran the catchline written over the list of top-10 finishers.

"The C7 was the first really good car that Sauber had built," says Welti, who'd started driving for the team in 1977 and then segued into a management role. "The problem was that it was underpowered. We needed to find a solution, but Peter didn't want to just buy a Porsche engine, because he knew he'd never be able to beat the factory cars as a customer.

"He became really focused on doing something with Mercedes. Don't forget that at that time he only spoke German, so if he didn't want to go with Porsche and it couldn't be BMW because they didn't have a suitable engine, then it had to be Mercedes."

Welti credits Hiereth with getting the engine project off the ground. He points out that it had to be undertaken in secrecy without the knowledge of senior management, because the decision Mercedes took in 1955 to withdraw from motorsport still stood, at least as far as circuit racing went.

"It was really Hiereth who led everything on the Mercedes side," explains Welti. "What he was doing was actually very dangerous because at that time Mercedes wasn't involved in motorsport. They were working on the engine during the night so that no one would know what was going on."

The need for secrecy also explains why it was put about that the engine project was being undertaken by renowned Swiss tuner Heini Mader. This was nothing more than "smokescreen", according to Welti.

"Maybe Mader built up one or two engines, but no more," he says. "We needed to be able to say, yes it is a Mercedes engine, but it is has been developed at Mader. Hiereth was very good at hiding the programme in his budget.

"I have to emphasise the importance of Hiereth and the guys around him. If they hadn't joined the party we would have been lost. I actually think Peter would have closed the team if Mercedes hadn't come on board - he did talk about doing that."

The Mercedes engine didn't race until 1986. The first Sauber-Mercedes, the C8 developed around the chassis of its predecessor, non-started on its one appearance of the previous year at Le Mans when John Nielsen crashed on the Mulsanne Straight.

Sauber ran a partial world championship campaign in '86 with backing from the Yves St Laurent aftershave brand, Kouros, which included a fortuitous victory in a wet, two-part race at the Nurburgring for Henri Pescarolo and Mike Thackwell.

By this time, Mercedes top brass was well aware what was going on in the company's engine department. The Kouros money had been found by former BMW Motorsport boss Jochen Neerpasch, then working for Mark McCormack's IMG management group. YSL was attracted to Sauber because of the Mercedes link: the cars were officially known as the Kouros Mercedes.

The idea for an official return to circuit racing by Mercedes was gathering momentum at a time when the company was trying to reinvigorate its image, and Neerpasch was co-opted onto the steering committee that would guide it on that path. He became the German manufacturer's head of motorsport when it announced its comeback with twin assaults on the World Sports-Prototype Championship and the German-based DTM touring car series in January 1988.

"Leo was doing everything; he was the designer and engineering both cars. They probably had no more than 12 people in total, including Peter and Max" Dave Price

Renamed Team Sauber Mercedes and running in the colours of Daimler-Benz subsidiary AEG, the Swiss squad made a winning start as a factory entry with an uprated version of the C9, again based on the C7 tub, that had come on stream in 1987.

But, although Sauber won the 1988 WSPC opener at Jerez with a solo C9/88 shared by Jean-Louis Schlesser, Mauro Baldi and Jochen Mass, the team wasn't ready to take on reigning champion Jaguar. Sauber wouldn't reach the top step of the podium again until July, following a disastrous Le Mans campaign: its cars were withdrawn after Klaus Niedzwiedz suffered a high-speed blow-out on the Mulsanne.

By Le Mans, Sauber had a new British team manager. Dave Price joined from the Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche team after being approached by Welti in the pitlane during the Silverstone 1000km meeting in early May. Price recalls arriving at a team that had yet to organise itself in a way befitting of a full-factory operation.

"It was very small when I first went there," remembers Price. "Leo was doing everything; he was the designer and engineering both cars. There was a chief mechanic and two mechanics on each car. They probably had no more than 12 people in total, including Peter and Max."

Ress agrees with Pricey's assessment: "I didn't have to take care of everything any more, so I could focus more on the detail development. Our improvement that year came through many little details."

He reckons that a damper test undertaken with the team's supplier, Bilstein, after Le Mans was the most important of those details.

"We always struggled with the rear Michelin tyres because of the torque of the engine," he explains. "We were able to be much more consistent after this test."

Sauber ran two cars in each of the six races post-Le Mans, winning four of them. Schlesser and Baldi ended up taking second and third in the points, respectively, behind Jaguar's Martin Brundle.

The plan formulated by Neerpasch back in 1987 envisaged a return of the Silver Arrows livery made famous by a line of pre- and post-war racing designs. The decision was made to enact it during Mercedes' end-of-season motorsport party in late '88 by Werner Niefer, chief executive officer of the company.

"Niefer had this amazing capacity to consume incredible amounts of alcohol while remaining crystal clear in this thoughts," recalls Welti. "We got down to talking business and ended up discussing how the cars would look. I suggested maybe it wouldn't be smart to put too much Merc branding on the cars so early in the programme.

"All of a sudden he was banging his fist on the table, the glasses jumped in the air and beer went everywhere. He said, 'Guys, I hear what you are saying, but the cars are going to be silver. And now we are going to drink to that'."

The Silver Arrows were back!