Reviving Sauber

We hear from Switzerland that plans for Peter Sauber to buy out BMW are well advanced and that a deal has already been struck with Ferrari for a supply of engines. The funding is believed to be coming from Malaysia, presumably involving Petronas, which has been a sponsor of the team since 1995. The aim back then was to use F1 to increase Malaysian knowledge of automotive engineering technology via an engine-building partnership with the Sauber team, and ultimately to build their own F1 engines. However these plans were shelved after the Asian currency crisis of 1998. The company has remained a sponsor ever since, increasing global awareness of the brand. BMW is believed to be asking as much as $90m for the team and has the fallback plan of keeping the Hinwil facility to use as an R&D centre for its new environmentally-friendly cars. If Sauber and his partners can raise the money then it is expected that the other teams will allow the team to sign the Concorde Agreement, the logic being that it is better to have a strong and established team than see it disappear and have to give the space to a weak new operation.