Sauber have become the first F1 team to officially unveil their 2017 challenger, the C36.
The car was revealed via the team’s Twitter account ahead of a shakedown at the team’s filming day at the Catalunya track on Wednesday.
The C36 features a new blue, white and gold livery and celebrates 25 years of Sauber in Formula One. The car, which has been redesigned from scratch, also features a striking shark fin.
“There is not a single part that could be adopted from its C35 predecessor.”
Sauber finished 10th in the 2016 Constructors’ Championship. Since entering the sport in 1993, they have a solitary win to their name – Robert Kubica at the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix – under the guise of BMW-Sauber. Sauber will run with the 2016 Ferrari engine for their 2017 campaign but should have a higher rate of car development this year, thanks to recent backing from Swiss investors Longbow Finance S.A..
Speaking of the team’s prospects for the 2017 season, team principal Monisha Kaltenborn said:
“Together with Longbow Finance S. A., we have great opportunites to be competitive again and to return to previous successes in Formula One. We want to position ourselves with a new approach, and we have already taken the first steps in order to build a solid foundation for the future.”
Sauber’s line-up is a relatively young one, with Marcus Ericsson, now in his fourth season in Formula One, being joined for 2017 by Mercedes junior Pascal Wehrlein, who will be hoping for a strong sophomore campaign. Wehrlein will miss next week’s test session due to a back injury. He will be replaced by Antonio Giovinazzi.
In a year of major regulation changes, could 2017 see Sauber climb back up from the bottom end of the grid?
What do you think to Sauber’s 2017 machinery? Will they have a better year than in 2016? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
After graduating in 2015 with a First Class honours degree in English Language and Literature, Nicky Haldenby, a lifelong fan of Formula 1, founded the Lights Out F1 Blog in 2016. Now in its sixth season, the blog has become a firm fan-favourite, delving deep into the sport’s history books and lifting the cover on unusual F1 statistics. Nicky also writes at F1Destinations and GPDestinations. In 2017 and 2018, he wrote for Badger GP. Nicky is also the host of the F1 Rewind Podcast and can be heard as the resident stats man on the 2 Soft Compounds Podcast.