Despite the disappointing 1999 championship, for the 2000 season the Swiss Red Bull Sauber Petronas team did not make any major changes and further developed the 1999 single-seater, creating the new Sauber C19. The technical staff under Peter Sauber still had Leo Ress as Technical Director, under whose supervision newcomer Sergio Rinland worked. Rinland is an Argentine engineer who graduated in 1978 from the Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina with a thesis based on a mathematical model of a vehicle suspension system and the design of an F2 car as its application. His long Formula 1 career began in 1983 with RAM before moving to Williams, where he contributed to the design of the winning FW11, and later to Brabham. After a brief stint in Italy with the BMS-Dallara team, he founded his own design company in England, Astauto Ltd, which designed the cars for the Fondmetal team. After Astauto closed, Rinland joined the Benetton technical team from 1996 to 1999 before moving to Sauber, where he took on the role of Chief Designer starting this season. The lean technical staff was then completed by the confirmed Ian Thomson, still responsible for chassis design, and aerodynamicist Seamus Mullarkey, who had joined from Jordan in 1999.
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| SAUBER C19, Mika Salo Magny-Cours, French GP 2000 |
Although the new C19 was directly derived from the previous car, its appearance was noticeably altered with a wider, flatter, and slightly shorter nose, reminiscent of the Ferrari F399. Beneath the nose lay the most significant innovation of the new C19, specifically introduced by Rinland: two vanes extending toward the underbody to lower the suspension mounting points, which also had an aerodynamic function aimed at improving airflow toward the car’s floor. The sidepod air intakes were redesigned with a softer, slightly trapezoidal shape, as were the flow deflectors. The engine cover and the air intake above the driver’s head, however, retained the same shapes as the previous C18, while the rear section of the car was reshaped to be rounder and smoother, although the solution of attaching the rear wing to the chassis via two arms anchored to the central section of the sidepods was retained, a design already adopted by many teams between 1995 and 1997.
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| SAUBER C19, Mika Salo Hungaroring, Hungarian GP 2000 |
For the fourth consecutive season, the car was powered by a Ferrari V10 engine, this time the Tipo 048 specification, producing 805 hp at 16,500 rpm, the same engine used in Ferrari’s F399 the previous year. As before, for sponsorship reasons, the engine was renamed Petronas SPE-04A, since the Malaysian petroleum brand supplied fuel and lubricants to the Swiss team and covered the rental cost of the Maranello V10s. Ferrari, however, did not supply the transmission and gearbox, which were built by Sauber itself: a seven-speed longitudinal semi-automatic sequential gearbox, by then widely used on cars of the new millennium.
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| SAUBER C19, Pedro-Paulo Diniz Spa-Francorchamps, Belgian GP 2000 |
As for the suspension, the rear setup was revised, while at the front the team retained the double wishbone pushrod configuration already used in 1999, based on the layout introduced by McLaren in 1998, although it had not delivered the same performance for Sauber. The livery remained unchanged, featuring the blue and aqua green of Red Bull and Petronas, with the distinctive yellow nose cone displaying the car numbers in red. After a disappointing 1999 season, lead driver Jean Alesi left Sauber for Prost Grand Prix and was replaced by Finnish driver Mika Salo. His hiring was indirectly supported by Ferrari, which had brought him in as a substitute for the injured Schumacher in 1999. For the second seat, the team retained Brazilian driver Pedro Paulo Diniz, who, despite lacking significant results, brought substantial financial backing through his personal sponsor Parmalat.
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| SAUBER C19, Kimi Räikkönen Mugello, private test |
The start of the season was far from ideal: Salo was disqualified in Australia due to an irregularity with the rear wing, although he had finished sixth, and the team skipped the Brazilian Grand Prix due to technical issues. The rest of the season was moderately positive: while the C19 was not particularly quick in qualifying or outright performance, it proved much more reliable than the C18, often making it to the finish line. Unfortunately, the car’s modest competitiveness left its drivers battling midfield rivals, with only four top-six finishes and a total of just six points, all scored by Salo. Diniz’s poor performance, with a best finish of seventh at the European Grand Prix at the revamped Nürburgring, hurt the team’s overall result, leaving Sauber eighth in the Constructors’ Championship, ahead only of Jaguar, Minardi, and Prost. By season’s end, Mika Salo accepted an offer from Toyota to become lead driver for the newly formed Japanese team, while Diniz was dropped. As a result, Peter Sauber was forced to conduct a series of tests at Italy’s Mugello circuit, near Florence, to evaluate a young driver to partner with new signing Nick Heidfeld, and among the candidates stood out the future World Champion, Kimi Räikkönen.
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