Johnathan Hoggard, Red Bull, Silverstone, 2020

No replacement for Aston Martin as Red Bull’s title sponsor

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says the team does not have a replacement lined up for outgoing title sponsor Aston Martin.

What they say

Racing Point owner Lawrence Strolls takeover of Aston Martin will see the Silverstone-based team take on their name for the 2021 F1 season, leaving Red Bull without a title sponsor. Horner said they do not have one lined up to take over:

We don’t have a title sponsor replacing Aston Martin for next year. We will have new sponsors that we introduce into next year. But Aston Martin won’t be on our car.

We’ve enjoyed four years – three years title and four years with them on the car – and we’ve helped to push the brand. We’ve obviously enjoyed a great relationship with the Valkyrie. Our deals were constructed under the former CEO Andy Palmer, who was always tremendously supportive of the team.

With Lawrence buying the business, it obviously was natural for them to exit and we’ll look forward to seeing the Aston Martin name live on in Formula 1 next year.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Lewis Hamilton revealed he lost four kilos after contracting Covid-19, which prompted questions over whether he should have returned for the season finale in Abu Dhabi:

I’m surprised he was allowed anywhere near the car to be honest after hearing that. Losing 4kg in a week without doing intense exercise is indicative of a serious illness and could have been detrimental to performance.

Hindsight is wonderful but given the risk/reward balance of him jumping in the car, it looks like he was on the wrong side of that equation. This is especially true as a viable replacement was available who probably could still deliver the same performance given Hamilton’s condition.
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On this day in F1

  • Born on this day in 1905: Pierre Levegh, who started six F1 races and died in the terrible 1955 Le Mans crash along with over 80 spectators

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67 comments on “No replacement for Aston Martin as Red Bull’s title sponsor”

  1. Montréalais (@)
    22nd December 2020, 0:09

    Haas F1 should definitely back away quickly from any further tarring with the Mazepin brush. It is clear that staying the course with the boy will smear the Haas reputation worldwide, as well as here in North America.

    1. Yeah, I don’t see how Haas could keep that guy on now even if they wanted to. He is pure poison. I also wonder how they will cope without the Mazepin millions.

      1. Well, Haas pulling the plug isn’t exactly what we want either

      2. @schooner both the EU and USA are considering potentially applying sanctions onto Uralkali and Uralchem over their alleged activities in Belarus, and also potentially on Dmitry Mazepin. If that were to pass, you’d have to assume that Haas would have to do without Mazepin’s money.

    2. Gonna be hard to get out of that contract. Look how hard his dad is fighting the racing point deal still.

      1. I’m hoping Haas had the sense to write some fairly safe “cop out” clauses into Nikita’s contract, e.g. gaining more penalty points than what he had in September (tick), “making unauthorised media statements” (tick), “actions likely to harm the image of Haas” (tick), “deterioration in the political relationship between Russia and the USA or Europe” (tick), etc. Hopefully Haas won’t have to pay a huge amount to Nikita for terminating his contract, or at least not more than what he has already paid them.

  2. COTD, Definitely, 100%.
    Likely we will never know, but were there were contract issues motivating LH to get back into the car.?
    Would have been great to see George Russel add to his points tally for the year.

    1. COTD definitely 10%, ok maybe 5%. If Hamilton was declared fit to race then why not? They don’t just sit out a race if they don’t need to.

    2. What I dont understand is how Lewis was even allowed into the country. The marshall’s had to quarantine for 2 weeks before they were allowed at the track according to Ted’s notebook, and that was even if they tested negative. What I do understand is why Lewis got back in the car despite still recovering. There was no way he would have wanted George to drive that car again after what happened the race before. The same reason he didnt tweet that weekend about what an amazing job George had done, in fact he didnt say anything about Russell’s performance until he was questioned by the Sky interviewer at Abu Dhabi, and even then it was just a one liner response. He would have been fuming inside, as it takes away some of the shine of his performances in the same machine against the same teammate. Lewis would have used all of his ‘clout/power’ within the sport to make sure he was racing even if he wasnt well.

    3. I understand the sentiment of COTD and fully agree with the seriousness of covid—but I’m somewhat ambivalent about the tut-tutting directed towards Hamilton.

      Since when has 100% capacity been the bar to clear for an F1 driver to simply take the track? Was Niki Lauda back to 100% capacity when he returned at Monza in 1976? Hardly. Was Senna at 100% physical capacity by the end of the Brazilian GP in 1991 when he was having muscle spasms and cramps? Of course not.

      Part of me wonders if this a sign of the times. If those events had happened today, would we have criticized Lauda for endangering his competitors? Would we have been dismayed that Senna didn’t do the responsible thing and retire when his cramps began affecting his performance?

      Hamilton is a race car driver—it’s his team, his car, his job, and of course he’d want to be driving. And unless the other drivers are protesting that he’s so far off the pace he’s endangering them — and I haven’t heard any of the complaining yet — I say let him compete.

      1. Yes.

        If you want a prime example of allowing someone to race that clearly was not able just look at Marc Marquez in motogp. Now THAT was a major issue, he never should’ve been allowed near a motorbike after breaking his arm a week before.

      2. You missed the whole point that the whole world is in a pandemic and if Lewis was putting others in the paddock at risk if he wasn’t fully recovered.
        It’s not about an injured individual.

        1. @Saffa Actually, the COTD was about the extent of lingering physical effects, which is what I was responding to — not contagiousness.

          Since he tested negative twice within 24 hours, he would have been free to leave isolation under any medical guidelines that I have seen.

  3. @montrealais @schooner I suspect Haas is in a financially precarious position, and thoughts on the video aside, I feel like his hiring is leading towards nothing more than a dead end. The association i’m sure will turn sponsors away, and Nikita (I could be wrong), is not world champion material, I doubt anyone would say he’s a step up from Romain and Kevin (who are who the are, just great on their day, not fantastic).

    So Haas is surely backing itself into a corner here, I can’t see any long term benefit other than the short term cash injection, which if Mazepin Snr wants to buy the team works perfectly, in 6 months time Haas will cost less than it does now, and 12 months less still.

    The alternative is to take the financial hit and dump Mazepin, but the consensus seems to be the Gene wants out. But at what cost, and whether Mazepin Snr even wants Haas.

    1. @bernasaurus

      Perhaps they are just trying to survive until the new financial rules?

    2. @bernasaurus apparently without the Mazepin deal HAAS would be out of F1. The dud deal with Rich Energy really hurt them.

      1. @bernasaurus So I think they are in quite a predicament now financially and from a public perspective point of view which will put pressure on the other sponsors.

      2. I mean, if it was obvious for everyone on this website that Rioch Energy was a scam, how could Haas be fooled? They didn’t investigate Rich Energy properly, and they didn’t investigate Mazepin properly.

        1. @paeschli Yes totally out of character, HAAS has been running racing teams since late 70s? plus a very successful tool company.

        2. They had no idea what the stupid kid was going to do in a video.

          1. Well, Don, this wasn’t exactly his first stupidity.

  4. A River There Chief
    22nd December 2020, 2:33

    Off topic but I enjoy these ‘things of the day’ posts snippets that are thrown in.

  5. Mark in Florida
    22nd December 2020, 2:38

    I’ve tried to comment before on what I think is going on at Haas but I got the dreaded “this comment is ….” so I’ll will try to be as p. c.as possible. I think that Gene Haas is looking to get out in a few years and Mazepin and his money was a way to do it. I believe that Haas might have been option two for Mazepin when the Racing Point buy out fell through. Anyways that’s my two cents on it.

    1. Of course it is. Says a lot about the current state of affairs that a driver would likely have been dropped over a poor joke video if it wasn’t for the weightiest of reasons like a team sale. Anything less and that would be a sponsorship and career-ender, even a big sponsorship package.

  6. Here’s a thought: couldn’t Ferrari buy out a majority stake in Haas and have this be an AlphaTauri-like relationship? I don’t think Haas are worth that much, plus cost cap might free up some money to spend for Ferrari in this regard.

    That way, they could put in two Ferrari drivers at Haas. I know they still have first say over Alfa Romeo’s second seat, but the Alfa branding deal ends in 2021, which could free up Sauber from 2022 onwards, maybe switching to a partnership with Renault if the Ferrari PU doesn’t improve.

    1. Maybe your assumption is spot on and it’s the reason why ferrari is busy with construction in maranello for the Haas team. Why not investing for Sauber who already bears a Ferrari sister company name.

  7. We will have new sponsors that we introduce into next year

    Let me guess Christian, will they be all those companies that are coming across with Checo like Claro, Infinitum, Telcel and NEC?

    1. right, Sergio is the replacement for Aston Martin.

      1. @hohum No, not as such, but there is no denying that Perez comes with a lot of backing from Mexican Corporates and their logos are always visible on the cars he races. You’ve seen his backers logos on the Sauber’s and Force India/Racing Point’s he had driven…Claro even found their way on to the MP4-28 at certain races.

    2. @geemac Seems likely.

    3. That is pretty much what i’d expect too, yeah @geemac

    4. @geemac well he’s not wrong! New sponsors by whatever source is still a new sponsor. We know Christian is a bit of a spin artist so naturally he will pose it that they are team generated as opposed to driver.

      @keithcollantine any chance of the sponsor watch articles returning in the new season? Always interested to see new and changing sponsors.

    5. I don’t believe sergio bring in THAT much money. He certainly has backers but I don’t believe it’s enough to match a title sponsor.

        1. Looks like the C31 had all of them.

          1. I was under the impression it was about 10m.

          2. @ppzzus That’s the figure I’ve heard as well. I think he keeps $5m of it as his salary and gives the rest to the team.

  8. My wish for 2021 is that this site drops the endless irrelevant political angles that displaces F1 related topics. Especially the identity politics ones. It’s like one has to go to other site to get at more serious and F1 related stuff, even in mid-season when there’s plenty sports-related stuff to choose from.

    1. I don’t get it @balue. How does including that aspect of F1 into the roundup limit the amount of “serious and F1 related stuff” on here? It’s not as if there were any of those articles out that that were NOT covered, is it.

      1. @bascb I get the impression that Balu’s real problem is the opinion he is hearing is not the one that he wants to hear repeated back to him, and he would prefer one that tells him what he wants to hear.

        1. That sounds correct to me ;)

    2. If anyone has a F1 website with less intrusive ads and less identity politics, I’m all for it.

      1. The ads are easily disposed of for a minor contribution, that’s fine by me.

        All the identity politics stuff, a total turn-off, we get enough of that in the rest of so-called ‘news’ coverage. The more you concentrate on visual differences, the less people will treat you as an individual person. It’s absurd that some immutable physical characteristic should determine your life, it breeds a victim mentality. The polar opposite of the thoughts of one of the bravest men of our (well mine at least) generation, Martin Luther King.

      2. If only there was a way to get rid of those ads. @paeschli

        If you don’t want the ‘added value’ of the site’s authors then you can always settle for a news aggregator like https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Sport/F1.

      3. pwecious wittle snowflake triggered by identity politics again, lol

    3. You could always try (drum roll) not reading the articles about identity politics, if they’re that annoying. No-one’s forcing you to read them. Or comment about them.

      Me, I don’t enjoy cricket. However, I don’t read cricket articles and post on cricket forums about how much I dislike the sport, mainly because I have better things to do with my time and don’t think that my opinions are the only ones that count.

    4. Politics are part of the drama that makes up F1.

      F1 is an expensive soap opera and I love it for that reason.

  9. Go to the other serious sites and you’ll see.

    But it’s not only the deplacement, it’s also the angle of what F1 is about. On one hand it’s all sports related, on the other is who the girlfriends of the drivers are etc. This should be firmly on one side. Outside politics has zero to do with it.

      1. Hm, most sites I know of have either far too much articles” that are there just for clicks, or are copied from someone else and keep regurgitating “own” content or indeed have ads all over the place (since I pay 1 GBP per month for the favour, I have no ads at all here) @balue.

        There are a few sites I happen to visit at times who do have their own content, but they are mostly not english language ones or are really narrow focus.

        What you call “outside politics” clearly does have influence on F1. It forms desicions made by teams (Mercedes, McLaren, how Haas seems to be weighing PR hits from Mazepin vs. sponsors not wanting their brand associated with him etc.), by drivers and indeed by the sport itself – see F1’s talk about diversity, about where they race etc.

        Unsurprisingly, you did not give me any clues for what content you feel is MISSING here, that you feel is “pushed out” by news you find uninteresting though.

    1. Hm, most sites I know of have either far too much copycat clickbait “articles”, keep regurgitating “own” content or indeed have ads all over the place (since I pay 1 GBP per month for the favour, I have no ads at all here) @balue.

      There are a few sites I happen to visit at times who do have their own content, but they are mostly not english language ones or are really narrow focus.

      What you call “outside politics” clearly does have influence on F1. It forms desicions made by teams (Mercedes, McLaren, how Haas seems to be weighing PR hits from Mazepin vs. sponsors not wanting their brand associated with him etc.), by drivers and indeed by the sport itself – see F1’s talk about diversity, about where they race etc.

      Unsurprisingly, you did not give me any clues for what content you feel is MISSING here, that you feel is “pushed out” by news you find uninteresting though.

  10. People appear prejudiced towards Mazepin beyond the social thing. I know he brings a reputation from junior classes but the roar seems to be largely based on his family doing (or preparing or at least having the ambition to do) a Stroll. So not great journalism lately around Nikita. People clearly have a hidden prejudiced agenda and since that is being so obvious, it will make things worse since the Mazepins can wave away any criticism by claiming it is political motivated (where have we heard this before?).

    1. No journalism at all. Just mob. Clearly Mazepin is an ars*, but people acting like he was bombing innocent civilian during married ceremony or something. Maybe because he’s a Russian.

      1. @ruliemaulana with your comment that “people acting like he was bombing innocent civilian during married ceremony or something”, you’re potentially actually closer to the truth than you might realise.

        There is an ongoing investigation into the activities of Dmitry Mazepin in Belarus where he might well be complicit in the death of civilians, over allegations that his company provided financial support to the regime that is violently suppressing the populace in return for getting hold of a chemical company he’s had his eye on for a while.

    2. It’s not because he is Russian. It is because he is a spoiled rich troublemaker.

  11. Re Haas: IT’S HAPPENING!

  12. They should check w/ rich energy

  13. Alternatives considered at Haas? There are many good drivers around, most of them lacking a budget.

    But negative publicity by racing a spoiled brat, is very expensive.

    Haas team is also a marketing exercise, you do not want to be known for selling your seat to some random playboy.

    Would any of you want to have your product sold by this guy?

  14. Re Haas. If they want to replace Mazepin there’s got to be some half decent driver out there with some sponsorship surely? Any suggestions?

    Then there is the issue of Ferrari to think about. They seem to increasing their input to the team so I doubt they will want the whiff of this matter hanging around to being bad publicity.

    1. @phil-f1-21 In some ways it’s unfortunate (for Haas) that Perez has just been confirmed for another team; he would have been a great candidate for a team needing a short-notice replacement driver with deep pockets. But I doubt Checo will lose any sleep over it.

      1. Haas was never an option for Perez, he was clear about it, he wasn’y going to Haas, Williams or other team in the back of the field, he preferred a sabbatical in that case.

  15. In vaguely motorsport-related news, Max Mosley has lost his court case against the Daily Mail for malicious prosecution. The Mail sent a dossier of documents to the Crown Prosecution Service alleging that Mosley had committed perjury when testifying in his case against the News of the World.

    The CPS declined to pursue Mosley citing insufficient evidence. However the court ruled that the Mail’s actions did not amount to ‘prosecution,’ and struck out Mosley’s claim.

  16. COTD: I see the point, but he, of course, wouldn’t have participated had he had even the smallest of doubt about his physical health. He only truly knows if he was ready to return as quickly as he did or not.

  17. Hard to live each moment of everyday knowing that things we once did while chasing the opposite sex would be the very thing society frowns upon years down the road. Look it’s not right. He’s not drowning cats in a barrel as a teen. But he made a bad decision during a sexy time moment that many of us would really have liked to have had but today’s world says no no.
    He didn’t understand the repercussion of his actions. Most of us are expected to apologize and promise to move on in life. But there are too many forms of technology where chicken hearted people hide behind the media and speak horribly about others. Happens everyday all over earth. The message of the haters is powerful. Whether the truth is present or not. This matter has spun its self almost out of control. The solution is to punish this kid so he will be forever known as a bad guy who got caught up in the attraction of a sexy time moment and like a dope he has become powerless to deal with it. Tried in the media he should give F1 the finger and walk away. He will never survive the scrutiny. Hard to live an entire life like Jesus and when you are a kid you believe you are doing everything is right because the human brain has yet to fully developed. To race a Grand Prix car is to live a life few know but dream about. Fast cars, money and hot women. That’s F1s image. Has been and will continue to be the drive of racing like this. Attention to drivers is completely out of wack. Has been and will continue to be. I think you ruin this kids life as an example to others and let it be known so it won’t happen again. It’s stupid. Maybe the human drivers should replaced with robots who act perfect for sponsors and will only bring perfect results for perfect investors. F1 a sport run by humans and involves the interest of millions of people. Dump this kid and move on. Who cares as long as formula ones image is secure

  18. Alex Zanardi fa ok con il pollice e guarda la moglie: la terza vita dopo l’incidente (Corriere della Sera – Italian)
    “The hand bike champion is slowly recovering his vital functions, in a journey that resembles a climb up Everest.”

    For a moment I thought the phrase below is a translation of the Italian headline. Now I don’t know enough Italian to understand the news without using translation but I’m glad he is in his path to recovery and as the note mentions “La sua terza vita” he’s been given a new lease of life, his third life if you will.

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