The Sauber C17 was the car with which the
Sauber
Sauber Motorsport AG is a Swiss motorsport engineering company. It was founded in 1970 (as PP Sauber AG) by Peter Sauber, who progressed through hillclimbing and the World Sportscar Championship to reach Formula One in . After operating it un ...
Formula One
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
team competed in the
1998 Formula One season
The 1998 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 52nd season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1998 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1998 Formula One World Championship for Constructors, which were contest ...
. It was driven by
Jean Alesi
Jean Alesi (born Giovanni Alesi, 11 June 1964) is a French professional racing driver of Italian origin. After successes in minor categories, notably winning the 1989 Formula 3000 Championship, his Formula One career included spells at Tyrrell ...
, who joined from
Benetton, and
Johnny Herbert
John Paul "Johnny" Herbert (born 25 June 1964) is a British former racing driver and current television announcer for Sky Sports F1. He raced in Formula One from 1989 to 2000, for seven different teams, winning three races and placing 4th in ...
, who was in his third season with the team after an impressive 1997 season.
1998 confirmed Sauber's position as a respectable midfield runner unable to make the final breakthrough needed to become a top team. The team's package was quick and reliable, but not quite enough to regularly score points. Indeed, Alesi and Herbert finished just outside the points, in seventh, no less than five times. The highlight of the year was Alesi's run to third at the
1998 Belgian Grand Prix to score the team's fourth podium since their F1 début in 1993. This capped an encouraging season for the Frenchman, who was duly kept on for another year. Herbert, despite a points finish in the
first race of the season, lost his motivation after a sequence of bad luck and narrowly missing out on further points. He decided to move to
Stewart for 1999, and would be replaced by
Pedro Diniz
Pedro Paulo Falleiros dos Santos Diniz (born 22 May 1970) is a Brazilian businessman and former racing driver. Diniz began karting at the age of eighteen and achieved minor success, before progressing to car racing in the Brazilian Formula Ford ...
.
The team eventually finished sixth in the Constructors' Championship with ten points. This was their best WCC position so far, but there was still some way to go to take on the likes of
Ferrari and
McLaren.
It was with this car that the last round steering wheel in Formula 1 was used. All steering wheels have been rectangular since then.
For the first few races, X-wings were used, but they were banned after the San Marino Grand Prix.
Complete Formula One results
(
key) (results in bold indicate pole position)
References
*''
AUTOCOURSE
''Autocourse'' is a series of annuals covering motor racing, and Formula One in particular. The annuals cover a long period of the sport's history, from 1951 to the present day, and, as such, are highly collectible.
History
The first edition o ...
1998-99'', Henry, Alan (ed.), Hazleton Publishing Ltd. (1998)
C17
1998 Formula One season cars
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