This cigar-smoking Swiss racing car constructor is the quiet man of Formula One, someone who seems out of his natural environment. However, people underestimate him at their peril. After all, anyone who runs their own team in Formula One for more than a decade deserves respect.

His power has been a steady focus and his willingness to work alongside manufacturers such as Mercedes and Ferrari to give them what they want. Peter was the invisible man among Formula One's often power-crazy team bosses, quietly getting on with his job and staying out of the media spotlight as he is not keen on it and does not like to speak in the sports' universal language: English.

As a result of this, as well as the team's unflashy sponsors, Sauber is the most forgettable of teams, found neither at the front nor at the back, just somewhere hidden in the middle. Against all of this Swiss caution, Peter has happily gambled on youth, as shown by the fact that he brought both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa into F1.

However, after vowing that did not want to be on the pit wall in his seventies, he handed the role of team principal to Monisha Kaltenborn in 2012.