BMW Sauber launches F1.09 at Valencia

Click above for high-res image gallery of the BMW Sauber F1.09

When it rains, it pours. Formula One racing fans spend most of the year watching the same crop of cars running around in circles, until the off season when all the teams unveil their new cars in the same two-week window of time. So after Ferrari, Toyota, McLaren, Williams and Renault have uncovered their 2009 challengers, with Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Force India not expected to unveil their new cars until next month, and with Honda's F1 future still in limbo, the BMW Sauber team have become the latest to join the party.

Called, simply enough, the F1.09, this will be the car in which Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, with the support of perennial test driver Christian Klein, will take on the rest of the field in the coming season. Its form is dictated by the same new aero regulations as its competitors, with BMW's own battery-based Kinetic Energy Recovery System installed underneath. Several teams have stated that, given the short timeframe they had to develop the hybrid system, they may delay its implementation, and Sauber's troubled gestation process was well publicized. Notably absent, meanwhile, from the car's livery this year is longtime sponsor Credit Suisse, the banking giant that cited a change in marketing strategies as its reason for not renewing its sponsorship. BMW Sauber unveiled the F1.09 on Tuesday morning at the test track in Valencia, Spain, which you can see in the high-resolution image gallery below.