Exclusive: Lotus F1 ‘working’ on Title Sponsor

September 13, 2013

By Ismail Uddin

Lotus F1’s top brass have reaffirmed that they are ‘working’ on a title sponsor and will only sign a deal with the ‘right partner’.

With Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes all having title sponsors, Lotus is currently the largest front-running team without such a deal. However Lotus F1 CEO Patrick Louis has suggested the topic is their minds but they will not make a hasty decision that will devalue the team.

He told iSportconnect exclusively: “We are working on a title sponsor. Instead of signing a not that valuable deal we would instead prefer to wait and pick the right partner. It makes no sense to rush it and get the fraction of the value we need to get.”

Louis also suggested that current sponsors are ‘key for the team’ and reiterated the importance of adding new sponsors in the future as inflation is sure to hit the teams significantly.

He added: “Everyone knows the budgets have to increase next year because we have a huge inflation on the powertrain for 2014 onwards. That is a serious hit each team has to face and each team has to figure out how to finance it.

“There are three possibilities, you have to reduce certain other expenditures which is quite difficult because many costs are triggered from the events itself. For example if you have to travel to New York you can’t say I don’t want to go but you have certain limitations that you will operate in.

“The second possibility is to find new sponsors because you can’t return to your current sponsors and say ‘My friend I’ve got inflation and now you have to increase your sponsorship’ as they will say thank you and goodbye.”

“The third possibility is that the shareholders have to increase their financial engagement and that’s the same for every team on the grid.”

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