The fallout from Crashgate came very quickly and very hard – both ING and the Spanish insurance company Mutua Madrilen have cancelled their sponsorship of Renault F1 effective immediately. James Allen reports that ING were providing $65 million annually with $5 million annually from Mutua Madrilen. Losing $70 million is a big hit – makes [...]

This is how the Renault F1 “crashgate” ends (except for inevitable fallout of different kinds) – Renault stays involved in the sport, the guilty team managers are suspended from the sport for up to life, the guilty driver gets immunity but will likely never again step into an F1 car. James Allen writes on the [...]

The scandal over Nelson Piquet Jr.’s intentional crash at Singapore last year, now resulting in the resignations of Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, is the latest and perhaps biggest example of how to make sponsors look at other types of sponsorship engagements. There’s been so many scandals in F1 over the last few years that [...]

It’s good to see Proctor & Gamble’s decision to sponsor the U.S. Olympic Team. At a time when every marketing decision is being carefully considered, this decision must have cleared a high hurdle, particularly for a company in an industry that is so driven by metrics. This comes at a good time for the USOC, [...]

USF1, or USGPE, have announced a partnership with YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley – AUTOSPORT covers the story here and provides an interview with Mr. Hurley here. Some questions/possibilities come to mind. It appears this is Chad Hurley, entrepreneur, aligning with the team. Not Chad Hurley, CEO of YouTube, doing so. So it seems his [...]

The F1 slow burn has not died out, indeed, it’s flared right back up and stands ready to scorch the cheek of anyone who gets too close. Yes, Max Mosley seems to have backed off his promise to not run for re-election in the fall. Seems those “naughty” teams went a bit too far in wishing [...]

Thierry Weil, FIFA marketing director, is reported in Sports City as stating that he expects the recession will affect the 2010 World Cup in South Africa only indirectly, with biggest impact being on the number of children that are flown in from host countries to promote sponsors’ products. Which frankly seems like a good thing [...]

From Sports Marketing reporting on Real Madrid’s request of adidas – it seems the self-described best football/soccer club in the world are trying to get the most out of that perception while they can – Real Madrid are “encouraging” adidas to double their 60 million Euro sponsorship, or risk seeing the club turn to Nike. [...]

Wow.  Even for someone with a track record of gross mis-statements, this one goes too far.  Bernie Ecclestone, chief of Formula One Management and Formula One Administration, in an interview with The Times goes WAY over the top and basically says that Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy.  And that Bernie liked Hitler because he [...]

If you’re  a F1 fan, no doubt you’ve been following the management battle between the FIA and Formula One Teams Association (FOTA). This blog launched in what now seems to have been the final week of that disagreement, thanks to the news yesterday that a resolution has been reached. Huge relief – the last thing [...]