One rumour doing the rounds at the moment is that Williams may end up with title sponsorship from Qtel, the Qatar national telecommunications company. This makes a great deal of sense. The Qtel Group is a fixed and mobile telecommunications operator, operating in Qatar, Indonesia, Kuwait and Iraq. It has a customer base of 82 million and is present in 17 countries. Its stated aim is to be a global player by 2020 and it is busy growing its assets in the emerging markets of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It is developing a broadband network called wi-tribe.
A key focus area in its strategy is a scheme called mHealth, which uses advanced mobile technology to provide medical updates and alerts for individuals and organizations. This is similar in many respects to some of the work that is being done by McLaren Applied Technology, based on its experience gained in F1. Williams could be very helpful in this respect.
As it grows Qtel is becoming more and more involved in sponsorships, notably last year with the 12th Arab Games.
To make it even better, the company has a logo in blue and white, which would fit in very nicely with Williams’s usual livery.
According to this article on their website they also help broadcast F1 in Qatar by offering the Abu Dhabi Sports Channel on their cable television service: http://goo.gl/1T7Io
Indeed, never underestimate the significance of logo colours, amazing how many people failed to appreciate that when Ferrari and Santander were still a rumour.
That’s a really cool logo, actually… so much more interesting than the ones telecoms companies over here have!
Do you think that maybe the telecomunications company they could be talking to is Embratel?
IN the Autosport article it said that Williams were looking to replace AT&T with another telecomunications company. Also Senna has been sponsored for several years by Embratel. Joining the dots here and asking could the company in question be Embratel as it is one of the few telec companies interested in sponsoring motosport and it happens to be linked to a possible driver?
(sorry for making that the long way of saying it)
I don’t think this is the case.
Bruno Lalli is not going to Williams. No chance. He didn’t impress at Team Genii this season, even less so than Heidfeld.
Why is Bruno near F1? I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the surname he chose to race with.
Why would Senna help him, Ayrton’s surname until he went to Europe to race was Da Silva and the guy who won 2 championships at Renault and is now driving a Ferrari should also be Fernando Diaz under your logic.
Regardless of his surname he looks like Ayrton, especially with his helmet on.
And what do you think of Damon Hill using the same Helmet as his father, along with his father’s surname while joining F1 even later than Bruno!
The reason Senna is using the name Senna is the same reason he started racing late… because of his family.
In my opinion I think he was quite impressive at Renault. Without racing for 8 months he outqualified the incumbant Petrov on his first outing and although rather rusty from not racing, he had good pace during the races. If you had watched the live timings then you could have followed this.
If he had started earlier he would easily be in F1 in my opinion, however at this stage it comes down ot other things as well. I think he deserves a seat. Sutil does too though. As does Alguersuari.
Portuguese (and Brazilian) naming customs are somewhat flexible: there is no hard and fast rule as to whether or not someone retains both their parents’ (or grandparents’) surnames or whether a married woman chooses to add her husband’s surname to hers (or, rarely for a married man to add his wife’s surname). It is a matter of personal choice. But, where the name comprises two, three or four surnames, it is standard practice for the person to be commonly known by only one of the names – and again there is no hard and fast rule as to which of the names is used; again it is a matter of personal choice. Additionally, where there is a “notable” relative or ancestor, it is common for that person’s name to be retained, and used as the preferred surname, in their honour.
Thus, Ayrton Senna (mother’s name) da Silva (father’s name) was known as Aryton Senna (because Silva is a very common Portuguese surname), his sister Viviane retained both her mother’s and father’s surname and added her husband’s to become Viviane Senna da Silva Lalli, and continues to be known as Viviane Senna (most likely in honour of Ayrton). Bruno dropped his maternal grandfather’s name (da Silva) and is Bruno Senna Lalli, and is known as Bruno Senna, again most likely in honour of Aryton. All entirely in keeping with Portuguese/Brazilian custom.
None of which will help Bruno get a Williams drive. Frank is not known for sentimentality!
Christian Klien should have a drive too right? Since he outqualified Senna by more than a second after several YEARS away from active racing in F1 at HRT.
And Sakon Yamamoto was pretty close to the Brazillian too.
And Bruno could’ve used an entirely different helmet colour. He didn’t, he’s hapilly taking advantage of Ayrton’s legacy, and as such I will judge him as Ayrton. He’s got no hope of being successful in f1. Off to Le Mans or DTM or Brazillian truck racing with the other never beens.
Hype is the only thing Bruno has going for him.
3 things
1) HRT ran 2 different spec cars. They didn’t have the money for both to be at spec. The pay drivers of the lower number car hadthe better car. This included such luxuries as a ‘seamless’ gearbox among other thing. You can’t compare drivers because they weren’t using even vaigly the same car
2) He is related to Ayrton. Damon Hill used pretty much an identical helmet to Graham Hill. Atleast Bruno’s has some blu and a different design. Inspired yes, copy no.
3) He started very late, has had some great results including finishing 2nd in the 2008 GP2 season against guys who started when they were 8 or 9… or younger! He has impressed Honda in testing against times of Button (whos a WDC for goodness sake), impressed with technical feedback with Boullier at Renault and has been matching pace or about that against Petrov who had 8 months of recent driving against a rusty Senna from Spa onwards. He has several great performances to his name, and that is more than hype.
Thank you for typing that all out and saving me the trouble. I was responding to Josh’s rant about Senna using Senna only to get ahead, when ironically enough, it is because of the Senna bit that he was so far behind.
I believe Williams is a bit sentimental over Senna though because aparently on all the cars since 1994, the letter S or Senna logo has appeared on all their cars. Not sure if that’s true but there goes the story
Just googled it and it used to appear on different parts of the car but recently it has appeared on the front wing or near the front down low. Google Senna logo Williams for to see pics.
Williams appears to be a somewhat ‘sentimental man’
The Senna logo has been placed on the car since Ayrton’s death. It is for the Senna Foundation.
That makes sense, although I don’t see McLaren putting it on their cars nor do I think Williams has any obligation to do so himself or for the team.
I think it’s an emotional response, especially given that without hearing about it, I otherwise wouldn’t have know…it’s not exactly something people see.
Well it’s not a big sponsorship thing, but the team chooses to remember Senna with a little sticker somewhere on the car. To those who know about it it can seem like a nice show of remembrance and everyone else remains oblivious.
What happened to the supposed QNB deal?Was it only if kimi had joined williams?
“supposed” is the word. When it comes to Qatar it is basically all decided centrally. So if Qatar decides to support Williams it will be with one or perhaps more different companies. It could be QNB, it could be Qtel. It could be any number of entities. It could be nothing.
Joe, I’ve often found some teams tend to stick to the colour patterns of their sponsors even after they’ve left them. Sauber’s livery design is not too different from its BMW Sauber days, except for the change in colour (I’m talking about the general pattern). Williams’ affinity with blue and white too dates back to its BMW days and even before to its Rothmans years, though in between in 1998 and 1999 it was in red Winfield colours. If I’m not mistaken Williams has never had a colour of its own like say, Ferrari or McLaren. Now it seems it likes sticking to white and blue with the red lines of PDVSA adding a bit more spice. I’ve also wondered why doesn’t McLaren race in its traditional orange colour now that the Mercedes-Benz part-ownership is decreasing. Perhaps the team might change to the iconic orange from 2013?
Probably more a corporate choice – bright orange may be popular with fans that know McLarens history but I don’t think Orange would be a colour they would want their cars to be seen in generally
@Alan Harvey
But their McLaren MP4-12C road car is most seen in the orange colour. But as you say, it’s a corporate decision, and especially with Vodafone involved they wouldn’t want any Orange connections.
The chrome silver is McLaren’s identity now. I quite liked the orage they used in testing in 2006 I believe.
It would clash horribly with the red Vodafone though. Don’t suppose Orange would want to take over instead?
@Josh,
Yeah, those Orange Arrows were the most striking F1 cars in recent times. Too bad, for me, that McLaren doesn’t want to revert to the orange. They can make a slight change to orange shade though and splash their cars with the Vodafone red. They do sometimes wear bright orange-ish t-shirts during their post-race celebrations.
McLaren ran orange test cars in both 1997 and 1998 at least – if like me you’re anoracky enough to build kit models, you could even buy aftermarket paints and decals for those versions.
Blue and white on Williams goes back at least as far as 1985, with a splash of yellow.
I hate the fact that nowadays all the liveries are governed by corporate identity. Part of the excitement of launch season was always seeing new or evolved colour schemes, sponsors and logo placements. Now we just seem to get the same year in, year out.
Red Bull and Toro Rosso’s liveries have been in the main the same since day one; both have had subtle changes made, but surely it’s time for a change… same goes for Mclaren.
A livery is the team’s visual brand thus they like to keep them the same. It is only logical to do so.
Well we got a new Lotus colour scheme last year and I remember the Sauber people saying something about wanting to get back to the more traditional Sauber colours (blue/turquoise) in the next year or two. HRT and Marussia may redesign too.
The worst thing with RBR and STR is that they look too similar in poor lighting, I normally need to see the nose (yellow and gold respectively) to quickly identify one from the other.
Has any team in recent memory raced with deliberately non-identically liveried cars? Seems like it could go a long way to making cars more identifiable for spectators. Off the top of my head all I can think of is the tobacco-ban era McLarens running “David” and “Mika” logos.
BAR wanted to, one care for Lucky Strike and one for 555, but the regulations don’t permit it. They ended up with a livery split in half down the middle…
Here’s some pics of what they ended up with. ALways fun to watch it in a spin…
http://richardsf1.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/BAR1999.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sIrV8Yjf-K0/SVtH7aSha9I/AAAAAAAABA4/u1V3tTfqs-g/s320/Jacques+na+BAR.jpg
And here’s what they wanted to do until Bernie said no
http://www.leblogauto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bar-supertec-1999.jpg
Interesting – thanks for the pictures. I faintly remember that car but didn’t know the backstory of attempts to run two liveries.
Oddly it’s something which I think might serve F1 very well – to ask teams to provide two different colour schemes on a large, visible part of the bodywork to help spectators and commentators out.
The most sensible choice would be on the engine cover, as it’s probably the most constant piece of bodywork – the rear wing risks being broken and switched for the team-mate’s piece at the last minute.
As for colouration, inverting the colours would be fine – though Red Bull would object as they’d presumably have to have a non-red bull on the side.
The other option is to insist on bigger, more prominent car numbers, but all the teams would grumble about lost sponsor revenue. Hmmmm.
I thought the 555 liveried car looked pretty spectacular, but as Lucky Strike was the more global brand they went with that when the did away with the split car.
Of course, having a white car with a big red circle probably helped when courting Honda.
BAR used to run with a Lucky Stripe (?) livery in Japan which was different to the standard one which advertised a different BAT cigarette brand. If I recall correctly they wanted to have one car in each, but we’re required to have identical liveries so split the two liveries down the middle and ran one side of both cars in one and the other side in the other.
So it may well be a requirement to have cars on identical liveries. But other people here will know better than I.
Williams of course ran Piers Courage in a private Brabham that was dark blue. When they had celebratory color schemes in the offseason some years ago, that was the color they went for.
Interesting, Q-tel sponsored Brawn GP at Abu Dhabi in 2009 so they have history with F1.
It seemed to be a bit of a last minute deal, i remember seeing a confused looking Nick Fry trying to work out where all the black and white logos should be applied on Friday afternoon.
Unfortunatly I have only seen them using their hot pink logo recently, at least on the plus side it would go with Adam Parr’s hair…
I wish Q-Tel would concentrate on connecting the fibre optic router they installed in my villa 3 months ago, to the network!
Seriiously, really hope Williams make it back to the good times.
@PT
Williams does have a standard colour – and it is dark blue – used since the late sixties on various Frank Williams entries. This is why Williams cars in testing livery are always very dark blue and white. If at all possible, you will notice there is always a dark blue constituent to Williams liveries.
@mayhemfunkster even in the Saudi days?
True Josh, no blue in the Saudia cars, just green and white. And in the Iso Marlboro and Winfield days FW ran cars that were dominantly red and white, and the FWRC De Tomaso 505 in which Courage lost his life was plain red. Frank does seem to prefer the dark blues (a product of his schooling in Scotia?) but he’s not averse to playing the corporate game.
Indeed chaps – all the above are correct obviously. Williams always runs the livery it needs to run – I expect white/blue was more luck than judgement in the BMW era but whenever they have to choose a base colour for the livery it always seems to be dark blue…