One of the weird things we noticed about Formula One’s season-opening race at Bahrain was how the Sauber Team was still called the BMW Sauber Ferrari F1 Team, despite the fact that BMW has already pretty left the sport.

Now we’ve gotten a clearer picture because, as it turns out, BMW’s name was carried forward into 2010 because Sauber didn’t formally request a change in their team name. Though these are unconfirmed reports, it appears that it was a deliberate move by Sauber to hold on to the BMW name so that it wouldn’t jeopardize its right to BMW’s prize money from last year.

Team boss Peter Sauber has acknowledged that the team is planning on submitting a request for the name change, although the exact time is still up in the air. ”Nevertheless, it will happen some time this season,” he said.

We don’t really foresee any trouble on the horizon for the Sauber team for withholding their name change. It was just a little confusing seeing that there was still a ‘BMW’ team in F1 when in fact the company had already left the sport at the end of the 2009 season.

F1's BMW Sauber Ferrari team set to drop 'BMW' name in the near future - Top Speed