F1 Sponsorship - Billions or Bust.
It’s no lie that in order to reach Formula 2 you must have sacrificed an immense amount of money to get there. However, the next step up to the illustrious F1 can have a price on it that only the billionaire backed can reach.
To make it as a racing driver you must have sponsorship. While you may have many faithful and helpful sponsors unless they can offer deals to keep F1 teams (especially smaller ones) financially afloat, your chances of a drive fall further and further from view. But this is the way the industry works. As many say about this sport, cash is king.
A large amount, if not all of the drivers we see on F1 today have reached there thanks to wealthy parents, the backing of F1 driver academy’s or a huge amount of sponsorship potential. World champions Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel come from very ordinary working class backgrounds and their families took on extra jobs and sacrifices to get their sons undeniable talent recognised. Even that commitment would not be enough to attract esteemed Formula 1 teams. Both drivers were lucky enough to receive financial backing to help them reach their ultimate goals. BMW, a huge name in the motorsports world, sponsored Sebastian Vettel and Ron Dennis, team principal of McLaren at the time, backed Lewis Hamilton. Without these huge sponsorships, it is almost certain their talent alone would not be enough to reach past feeder series level
The reason why many young drivers do not pass feeder series level is not always because they do not have what it takes to reach further. If the driver can not offer the team potential profit from taking up a seat in their team their chance of reaching further is slim. Talent comes second to money, especially in smaller teams who run on sponsorship deals.
This can be seen even in F1 with Nikita Mazepin receiving the 2021 and 2022 seat for Haas F1 team partnering alongside Formula 2 champ Mick Schumacher. Nikita is an accomplished driver but only placed 18th in his rookie season of Formula 2 and 5th the following year before being promoted to the pinnacle of motorsports, but Nikita had something other drivers could not offer Haas, a billionaire father and a haul of potential sponsorship.
The same can be observed in Alfa Romeo. Antonio Giovinazzi has recently lost his seat at the team for 2022 to Guanyu Zhou. There is no denying that Zhou is extremely talented behind the wheel of a single seater but, he also has the extra appeal to teams in terms of sponsorship. Guanyu will be the first ever Chinese Formula 1 driver (can we get a round of applause for that) this is an amazing achievement but it also provides massive sponsorship potential from the Chinese market for whatever team signs him, in this case Alfa Romeo. This means we see drivers like Antonio Giovinazzi lose out on a seat. Antonio is a Ferrari Academy driver and with Alfa Romeos evident links to Ferrari (AKA their engine), you would think it would be difficult to remove Giovinazzi from the team but when drivers like Zhou bring along sponsors that are rumoured to be willing to pay upwards of €30 million (!!!), it’s not difficult to see how this decision was ultimately made.
Being a small team whether in Formula 1 or 2, it can be difficult to stay afloat when competing with giants like Mercedes or Ferrari. Money has to be the driving force if you want to succeed. Talent and accomplishment without sponsorship means nothing in this sport. This is a huge shame but hopefully with cost caps coming into play in the next few years we can maybe see a slight possibility of sponsorship money becoming less of a factor in the decision of drivers and the focus can be steered back to sheer talent.
Thank You for reading! I recently took a break, much longer than I expected, to get myself settled into university. I am back now and hope to bring you some great content over the final few weeks of the championship!
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Soph x