BMW Sauber F1 race car unveiled for 2007

On Tuesday, January 17th, BMW Sauber unveiled their new car for the 2007 Formula One race season.

The engine, gearbox, and electronics for this car are all designed and built in Munich, at the team headquarters on Anton-Ditt-Bogen. A staff of nearly 300 engineers work here, including a couple of TT'ers as it happens. These engineers also work closely with the rest of the BMW staff, located at Forschungs- und Innovationszentrum (FIZ) in the neighbouring Knorrstraße.

The chassis is built in Hinwil, Switzerland, where they also have the wind tunnel for testing.

The F1.07, as the new car is called, has a new seamless-shift gearbox allowing switching of gears without loss of power. This is expected to save a couple of hundredths of a second per lap. The new car also has a completely redesigned front wing, a revised cooling system, and a slimmed down rear end.

The first race of the season will be in Australia on March 18th. The team's drivers will be Nick Heidfeld (German) and Robert Kubica (Polish).

BMW are viewing this season as another practice year. They need to continue adjusting to wholly owning their own team for the first time since the split away from Williams F1 at the end of 2005.

BBC Sport: BMW confident of podium finishes

I reckon this wagon looks boring in comparison to the other 2007 title contenders that have been launched. The new Ferrari (dig the white highlights), Renault and to a lesser extent McLaren look wicked.

Those air intakes are somewhat more enormous than last year's car too. (Boring F1 anorak stuff...I know, sorry)

Does anyone have info on how this seamless shift works? Sounds interesting.

Or is it just a CVT box?

CVT boxes aren't allowed in F1 so I'm guessing that it's just a thuper duper DSG type box which doesn't lose any power between the exceptionally fast shifts. This technology isn't new, Williams were already using this in Bahrain last year.