The Art of Selling: Sponsorship 101
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The Art of Selling: Sponsorship 101
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By David Cameron, Italy
Atlas F1 Magazine Writer
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Table of Contents includes links to each chapter
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In a fight between the marketers and the aerodynamicists, the money wins every time - maybe not immediately, but long term the money men will have their way eventually. Aerodynamic changes can affect the look or visibility of a sponsor's logo, which can cost a team money - this cannot happen for a sustained period in today's Formula One. Here's how sponsorship can change the look of a car: "Obviously tradition plays a part, because you've got research from previous years, but regulations change and the aero guys will stick a fence here or a little winglet there and that will render what was previously a pretty good position pretty poor.
"But you have research that tells you certain areas work, and what we've been working very hard at behind the scenes is to change some of the technical regulations so that our sponsorship works. If you look at the moment at the rear wing; at most of the circuits teams run a forward mounted guide vane in front of the main elements of the wing, and that has completely stuffed the visibility of the rear wing in the last four or five years. Because, since some bright spark came up with that, you've got a completely flat plane here right in front of the vertical planes, and obviously the vertical planes are the ones where you see the sponsorship recognition, and a flat plane blocking that.
"And for next year, through our work, we've managed to get them banned. So the rear wings will now just have the vertical elements and it'll be similar to how we race in Canada, the kind of circuit where the downforce you need you don't want to have a turning vane in front of it. And we're delighted with that - absolutely delighted. We've got bigger engine covers next year, and bigger rear wing end plates, and that's something which Williams, and McLaren in particular, have forced through. "Because, clearly, you've got sponsors saying 'look, that rear wing you sold us is not doing a lot for us - at certain circuits it's great, we love it, but other circuits it's just not working for us - and next time around I don't think we're interested in buying that position'. So you say 'hold on a minute, we've got to do something about this'. So Ekram will go to Ron (Dennis), I'll go to Frank and say 'we've got to do something about this bloody rear wing. And it's the same for everyone, so let's get rid of the things'. So what, we lose two percent, three percent downforce, but if everyone loses that…" Which means the aerodynamicists hate it whenever Wright comes walking down to their end of the office. "Yeah, of course they do! This big engine cover that everyone's got to have for next year was a horror for them, because for the last few years they've been making these engine covers smaller and smaller and smaller, chipping away at it and making the whole car tiny, and obviously getting aerodynamic advantages that way. Then we've come along and said 'no, we need a big engine cover, massive', and they don't like it, but at the end of the day they know that there's no racing without the money coming in, so they understand. And it's the same for everyone."
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"And okay, you put repeater stickers on there, but getting that all to marry up is very difficult, and you noticed it last year when we switched from Compaq to HP it just looked awful on the rear wing, because they've got a circle and a lozenge shape and if you put it on a vertical surface[it looks] fine, but when you've got a horizontal surface in front of it, then trying to get it to match up from all angles is a disaster. That's one of the reasons why they've changed to 'invent' on the rear wing this year.
