Alfa Romeo join the club with Ferrari, McLaren and Williams
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Sauber, which have been operating under the name Alfa Romeo since 2018, have something to celebrate this weekend. The Turkish Grand Prix will be the 500th Grand Prix for the team. This will allow the team to join an illustrious club.
The 500 Club
The South African Grand Prix in 1993 was the first Grand Prix in which Sauber competed. Karl Wendlinger and JJ Lehto were the drivers at the time and Lehto immediately managed to grab points with a fifth place. In 28 seasons Sauber managed to win a Grand Prix once. In 2008 Robert Kubica won the Grand Prix of Canada in the BMW Sauber.
With the Istanbul race, Sauber join the unofficial '500 Club', to which only Ferrari, McLaren and Williams belong. These are the only teams in the history of Formula 1 to reach the 500 Grand Prix limit. "An important milestone for us as we write another important page of our history", the Sauber team said in its press release. "We take great pride in joining the “500 Club”, a very exclusive group of teams comprising some of the most historical names in the sport.”
On to the next 500
Alfa Romeo team boss Frédéric Vasseur is very proud of the milestone. "As an independent team for most of our history, we have shown that it’s possible to build a long-term project and we are confident the best is yet to come - the next 500 races will be even better.”
Celebrate in style
The team, of course, wants nothing more than to celebrate the anniversary in style, to score points in Turkey. "Especially after the double points finish we scored in Imola, which was a big confidence boost for the team", says a positive Vasseur. "The progress we have made is a positive, as is scoring points in three of the last five races, but we know there is a lot more work to do before we are where we expect us to be.”