It's been one year since BMW announced they were buying the Sauber F1 team. Congrats to our BMW F1 colleagues for their progress, and this nice ink on today's Motorsport.com:


It's never an easy job to set up a Formula One team, even when you're a manufacturer such as BMW and taking over an outfit that already exists. It was June last year when the announcement came that BMW had acquired a majority interest in Sauber and would enter the 2006 championship as a team in its own right.

After eight races this season BMW Sauber is fifth in the constructors' standings with 17 points, only three shy of Sauber's total for the whole of last year. Speaking exclusively to Motorsport.com in Munich, BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen confirmed that the development is going according to plan.

"Yes, it is," he says. "We are in a two year ramp -up phase which covers this year and next year and by then we will have expanded the factory in Hinwil and taken on more than 150 additional people."

He adds that the integration between BMW HQ in Munich and the team base in Hinwil, Switzerland, is also an ongoing project. "It takes at least one winter period to get the engineers together and a race season to get the track people together, so I think by the end of the year we should be there."

Full story


Mario Theissen (GER), BMW F1 driver Nick Heidfeld (GER) with Dicko at our
team base during Valencia LV Act 10 in May.


Prof Dr Theissen in our marketing chase boat Henri Lloyd before racing as
18th crew during Act 10.