The setting for BMW’s assault on the high peaks of Formula One is perhaps not what you might expect from a car manufacturer whose products are synonymous with style, elegance and a certain up-market cachet.

Looking out from the third floor of the main office building set on a busy main road 20 miles southeast of Zurich, you can see the Alps in the distance, still white-topped with the remnants of winter snow, and closer there are attractive wooded foothills. There is even a smell of cow dung wafting in through the windows.

That is because, opposite the BMW Sauber Formula One team’s base, there is an abattoir and next to that is a vast industrial waste incinerator. To complete the picture, the neighbours on the other side of the main road include a supermarket and a garden centre. The workaday feel is not just about the setting, either.

Half of the BMW base is a building site as the team continue their expansion after the takeover of Peter Sauber’s team two years ago and everything from the low-key entrance, which takes you through a main door straight into a lift, to the workmanlike feel of the design offices tells you that money is not being wasted here.

It is from this place, just outside the village of Hinwil, that BMW, under the guidance of Dr Mario Theissen, their bronzed and moustachioed team principal, are masterminding a three-year build-up to what they hope will be their first season as genuine championship contenders in 2009. As Theissen put it with an infectious chuckle: “One could say we are a little bit ahead of schedule.”

Last season, the team finished fifth as Theissen began expanding his design and engineering staff in Hinwil and at the engine, gearbox and electrics facility in Munich. This season, despite early reliability glitches, BMW have been the big mover up the grid. After three consecutive fourth-place finishes for Nick Heidfeld, their German driver, they are sitting comfortably in third place in the constructors’ championship, with double the points of Renault, the champions, who are a place behind, and out of sight of Honda, who were ahead of them last season but are eighth.

The impressive aspect has not just been where Heidfeld has finished, but that he and Robert Kubica, his teammate from Poland who has had his share of bad luck, have shown the pace to run with the McLarens and the Ferraris. Given that BMW are in a transitional phase, one wonders what will happen when everything is on song.

The key to it is Theissen, a career engineer with BMW. He got hold of a well-disciplined team in Sauber, with a superb wind tunnel, and he is building incrementally. The total personnel will be in the region of 700 when he has finished, far smaller than many of the rival teams.

There will be only one wind tunnel. There is a spectacular super-computer known as “Albert the Second” (it can do 12 trillion things at once), but most importantly there is an engineer’s approach: attainable goals are set, problems are solved and money is not wasted.

Comparing BMW’s progress over the past six months with that of Honda, the German team have followed a conservative development strategy with their car and have reaped big rewards, while the Japanese team have stepped into the unknown. The comparison with Renault looks good, too. Whereas the Anglo-French operation has stumbled badly on the transition from Michelin to Bridgestone tyres, Theissen’s team have managed the switch effectively.

Talking in his office, which has no Formula One imagery, Theissen sums up his philosophy. “My personal conviction is that resources are to a certain extent necessary but will never guarantee success,” he said. “I see a big chance to get distracted if you have too many opportunities. So that is why we don’t want to have the biggest team, why we don’t want to have two wind tunnels or even three. Focus is more important than sheer size.”

The goal this season is to be in contention for podium places, next year race wins and then go for BMW’s first championship as a team in their own right in two years’ time. Theissen talks technically most of the time, but when looking ahead to the battle with McLaren and Ferrari — which will be rejoined at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on May 13 — Theissen said: “I can tell you it makes it a lot easier if you are in our position now. Every team member smells that we are close to the top and there is a chance to get the cars ahead of us.”

Changing gear

How BMW Sauber have fared this season against Honda, their old rivals, who finished one place ahead of them in the 2006 constructors’ championship
Australian Grand Prix
BMW: Nick Heidfeld fourth, Robert Kubica retired. Honda: Jenson Button fifteenth, Rubens Barrichello eleventh
Malaysian Grand Prix
BMW: Heidfeld fourth, Kubica eighteenth. Honda: Button twelfth, Barrichello eleventh
Bahrain Grand Prix
BMW: Heidfeld fourth, Kubica sixth. Honda: Button retired, Barrichello thirteenth.
Total points
BMW 18, Honda 0.