BMW had previously supplied turbocharged four-cylinder M12/13 engines to Brabham and several customer teams between 1982 and 1988, a period that included Nelson Piquet's 1983 Drivers' Championship with Brabham. After turbocharged engines were banned at the end of 1988, BMW withdrew from active engine supply until the late 1990s.
The return was motivated by a search for a long-term engine partner by the Williams team following Renault's withdrawal from the sport in 1997. BMW signed an exclusive supply agreement with Williams and developed a new V10 engine for the 3.0-litre formula. The engine made its race debut in the Williams FW22 at the start of the 2000 season.
The first season of the BMW-Williams partnership was a steep learning curve. The V10 unit showed promise but suffered from reliability problems, and results were modest compared to the dominance of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher during this period. By 2001, the partnership moved forward, with Ralf Schumacher taking race victories, and the team challenging more regularly for podium finishes.
However, the desired championship success remained elusive. Ferrari and Michael Schumacher were at the height of their dominance in the first half of the 2000s, winning five consecutive Drivers' and Constructors' Championships between 2000 and 2004. BMW and Williams could not find a competitive enough combination to challenge consistently at the front.
By 2005, the relationship between BMW and Williams had deteriorated amid disagreements over the direction of the program. BMW chose to end the partnership and pursue a different approach to Formula One involvement.
Rather than continuing as a pure engine supplier, BMW opted to take full control by purchasing the Sauber team outright. The resulting BMW Sauber outfit entered Formula One from 2006 with BMW providing both the chassis funding and engine. The team was based at Sauber's existing facility in Hinwil, Switzerland.
The early BMW Sauber seasons showed genuine improvement over what Sauber had achieved as an independent. Two podium finishes in 2006 were followed by a solid third-place finish in the Constructors' Championship in 2007 — which was subsequently elevated to second after McLaren was disqualified from the championship due to the espionage controversy.
The 2008 season produced the team's single race victory. Robert Kubica won the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, giving BMW Sauber its first and only Formula One triumph. Kubica also led the Drivers' Championship at one point during the season, raising hopes that BMW might challenge for the title. However, the team chose to shift development resources toward the 2009 car, and the competitive position slipped by the end of the year.
The 2009 season proved catastrophic. The BMW Sauber F1.09 chassis was fundamentally uncompetitive, and the team failed to score points on most weekends. The combination of poor on-track results, the global financial crisis affecting BMW's business planning, and the company's assessment that contemporary Formula One regulations offered limited opportunity to develop road-car-relevant technology prompted a withdrawal decision. BMW announced it would leave Formula One at the end of 2009, selling the team back to its founder, Peter Sauber.
The BMW V10 of the Williams era and the subsequent V8 units developed for BMW Sauber were produced at BMW's Munich facilities. The turbo-era M12/13 had been famous for extracting extraordinary power from a road-car-derived block — reportedly exceeding 1,400 bhp in qualifying trim at unrestricted boost — and this heritage gave BMW a strong technical reputation entering the 2000s. However, the naturally aspirated V10 era required different engineering priorities, and BMW found it difficult to close the gap to the leading units.
BMW's decade in Formula One in the 2000s ultimately demonstrated the challenge that even major automotive manufacturers face in converting resource and ambition into championship success. The Canadian Grand Prix victory with Kubica in 2008 stands as the high point of a program that showed genuine potential but could not sustain the consistency required at the front of the field.