The paddock was buzzing on Saturday morning in Montreal with a few juicy rumours knocking about, including stories about attempts to revive the French Grand Prix. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has asked for a meeting with Renault F1 boss Eric Boullier following some fairly trenchant remarks about President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government’s failure to support France’s motorsport industry.
Boullier has been asked to submit a report on what needs to be done and the government will then decide whether it can help. The first element in the plan would be to get a French driver into one of the better cars and on the back of that there is then a chance to revive the French GP itself, perhaps in alternation with the Belgian GP, which is struggling financially (as always). This in turn will help to build up more media and TV interest in the sport and help to encourage French companies to support the industry and use its global reach for their own ends. France has dozens of major multinationals which could be involved in the sport, but most have shied away from F1 because of the way some of them were treated by the last generation of French team owners, who did not leave a great impression in the business world. Boullier hopes that in time France can once again have a team, perhaps built around the Enstone operation. There has been some speculation that this might also involve Nicolas Todt, who runs the ART operation in GP2 and other championships.
The recent Lotus versus Lotus lawsuit has meant that the teams involved can now begin to raise money as the situation appears to be settled with Team Lotus continuing in its current form, and Renault continuing to be sponsored by Group Lotus. The whispers suggest that Team Lotus is about to start naming some big sponsors which have been holding off while waiting for the court decision. Tony Fernandes was spotted yesterday in Waterloo, Ontario, home of Research In Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry, which suggests that we may see that name appearing on the cars before too long. The other whisper I have heard is that Fernandes has pulled off a major deal with a big US corporation, which is keen to be involved with the team because of its associations with the aviation industry (through AirAsia) and in electric cars (perhaps via Caterham). The one company that would seem to fit the bill if this is the case is the giant General Electric, which makes aero engines and recently concluded a 20-year, $600 million deal with -guess who? – AirAsia. GE is also pushing hard into new energy research at the moment…
The company was founded in 1890 by none other than Thomas Edison. It is reckoned to be the fourth most recognised brand in the world and has revenues of $150 billion a year, so an F1 budget as part of bigger dealings would be no surprise at all. Fernandes has the advantage of being involved in multiple businesses which will help attract B2B deals with big brands keen to make a bigger impression in Asia. It will be worth watching out for other deals with mobile telephone brands, hotels, credit card companies, aviation businesses and automotive technology firms. Watch this space…
joeblogsf1 
Didn’t Tony F just launch a new telco in Asia just recently and been tweeting about how good the deals are for blackberry users…
What to be done about French motorsport? These ideas are just for the F1 fan watching at home, but French fans are very shoddily treated by the broadcaster.
Step 1, show qualies on TF1, not on Eurosport.
Step 2, try covering more than just the grid walk on a Sunday. Mentioning incidents from the qualifying session you didn’t show might be useful.
Step 3, provide insightful commentary about things happening on track, so that French fans aren’t balancing Twitter, Autosport live, and the radio to get some info.
Step 4, when returning from your constant ad breaks, consider summing up the action the audience has missed.
Step 5, ditch those horrible banner adverts that letterbox the coverage.
Step 6, just give up your day jobs and buy in the Beeb’s coverage. It’s a million times better anyway.
Excellent info Joe!
I do so hope Tony Fernandes can snag some big names back to the sport..
F1 needs big names appearing on the cars.. most of the sponsors at the moment the average guy on the street hasn’t heard of.
Keep up the good work.. great blog.
Regards,
Steve
Joe, please tell what the secret is with Mr. Fernandes? If he carries on like this, he’s going to have more blue chip sponsors than the big boys. I don’t know the man, but you have to admire him enormously.
“The first element in the plan would be to get a French driver into one of the better cars”
Joe, is this where the Grosjean replacing Heidfeld rumours have come from?
Paul,
Yes.
Cnbc is a GE company sitting with Marussia Virgin.
Tony met with RIM for Tune Talk. And you know that’s the reason, yet you suggested otherwise…
SOJoe,
Why don’t you stop criticising everything I write about Fernandes and wait and see what happens. You shoot your mouth off and I hear nothing when you are proved to be wrong. Time and time again.
one thing that the Senna film made me realise is how low the French influence in F1 is these days, it must be the lowest it’s been in years. This seems odd considering it’s the home of World Motorsport. Has the interest just slowly declined because of a lack of top drivers and the loss of the GP or is there anything else?
Most of fernandes ‘sponsors’ are his own companies. tune,naza, air asia, eq8.
Chris,
Wait a while…
Kate Walker: One solution in France (which I use) is to get a satellite dish and simply watch the Beeb. Though I miss Jack Lafferty …
SOJoe,
Tune Talk is peanuts for RIM/Blackberry, very unlikely CEO met Tony talking about it. If I were RIM CEO I won’t bother meeting Tony unless there is something big.
Why would Lotus Renault GP bend to the french govement?. They are no longer a french team, they only have Renault engines, and that is the only connection now.
Yes Boullier is french, and Lotus now ( yes the only team the can offically be called Lotus) is owned by Genni.
But like you said they are only rumours, and we all know what rumours are worth dont we.
“It is reckoned to be the fourth most recognised brand in the world” – really? General Electric?? That doesn’t sound right – am I missing something here?
SWBKCB,
I believe so
SOJoe- Am I right in guessing your a Group Locust supporter? You seem hell bent on bashing Fernandes.
Joe- brilliant, insightful story as always. Very interested over the RIM/GE possible tie up. And while I am at it, huge praise to Tony Fernandes- I own a small, community radio station that in December approached him for an interview via phone. We finally got our phone system installed this month, and when emailing him he’s upholding his end of the bargain when time allows (I would guess over the summer break).
Joe,
Thanks for a great blog and insightful news.
How about grabbing an interview with Tony at some point? I’d love hear more about his businesses and philosophies for success. That also goes for VJ Mallya, & Jose Ramon Carabante. All major rags & blogs seem to focus on the top teams, but I’m sure we’d all like to read more about some of the new generation team owners.
As far as getting a French driver into F1 I honestly don’t see any potential candidates on the horizon.
Cheers,
Steve
Is Fernandes using the F1 team to further his airline business? Was that his aim all along? Enticing blue chip companies with the lure of F1 sponsorship. Is that what Team Lotus is about?
go joe, teach the troll some manners lol
all the best to fernandez in his deals, it’ll be nice to see them getting some just investment
I saw Fernandes tweeting about going to visit the Bombardier HQ in Canada before heading to the Montreal GP with the team. They are in jets as well, so it might be them getting in as well Joe.
Mr SOJoe, even if Fernandes was meeting with RIM for Tune Talk, that would not hurt talking about a close cooperation with the Team Lotus as well. Actually it would probalby be rather another selling point to get that working.
It seems you haven’t noticed, but these kind of deals where sponsorship and B2b cooperation go hand in hand is getting more and more popular for motorsport in general and for F1. That is what the whole GenII bussiness and the Virgin involvement are about.
I saw Tony mention APC on his twitter feed as a new sponsor. They are arguably the most well known manufacturer of UPS (Uninterruptible power supply) in the IT industry.
As someone who works in IT, they are thought of as a big fish in the industry, at least in a brand sense.
He also mentioned Intel who should need no introduction. To me these are significant brands and would not be out of place on a front running team. I wonder what others he has in the pipeline
Canehan,
Thanks for the tip! I might have to invest in a dish. I’ve always resisted in the past, as it doesn’t really suit a stone gite, but style be damned – I want my racing!
Kate
I’d really like to see that Simon Pagenaud (2nd place in 2011 Le Mans) fella in an F1 car.
To any french f1 viewers my advise. Go to a website like firstrowsports or justintv and watch the bbc coverage. I use it alot for watching things like the race of champions and lemans when i want to also do things with my desktop.
Gotta say though joe I have never heard of General Electric.
Here’s my guess at the four biggest global brands
I’m going to say coca cola has got to be up there you can get it in just about every country, mcdonalds surely… there’s even one in iraq and cuba. Microsoft every country in the world has at least some computers the fewer there are the more likely they will be running a windows operating system and the more there are the more likely people will at least know about windows and there for microsoft. This is getting hard now erm… durex? paronomasia deffinetly intendid.
To The Brav3
General Electric.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric
And McDonalds : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s
General Electric ( GE) is a company that actually produces something , rather than rubbish (like McDonalds)
http://twitter.com/#!/tonyfernandes/statuses/80225945339957248 confirms the Team Lotus new sponsor part of this, for the doubters.
For those who don’t seem to believe that GE are quite a big deal, here’s the brand report Joe is referring too:
http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-2008/best-global-brands-2010.aspx
General Electric were considered the 5th “best” brand in the world (down from 4th in 2008), behind Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft and Google.
“The first element in the plan would be to get a French driver into one of the better cars”
I had to query that line, as did a previous poster…
To do this, the conventional route would be to actually have a good driver, otherwise, you need a pay driver. The current crop of pay drivers are seemingly often better than their higher rated paid teammates, or a lot closer than most give them credit. Petrov, Maldonado and Perez have all done very well this year, but this just raises the bar.
France will not want to watch if their driver is getting a good beating week in week out any more than they want to watch races with no French drivers.
It is fantastic fun listening to Eric Boullier at times, bearing in mind he actually called the British “arrogant” recently you do have to wonder if. like Count Dracula, he has no mirrors in the Chateau de Grande Delusions.
TheBrav3, how can you never have heard of GE?
http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/best_global_brands_2009.html
My guess would be if re-run today, Apple and Google would overtake GE… Nokia and Microsoft would decline.
Looks like you’re right on the money Joe.
“On my way to new york with Mike and Heikki. Big announcement on Tuesday. Big sponsor for lotus. Very Important for us”
Tony Fernandes on Twitter
I worked for GE for about 5 years. It may not be that well known in the UK as a lot of its business here is not direct with the consumer. A few years ago it employed about 20,000 people in the UK and about 4 or 5 years ago it was the world’s largest company (by mkt cap).
Not seen the meatball (GE logo) on an F1 car since Ferrari (about 10 years ago).
Their stake in CNBC was sold down to 49% to Comcast earlier this year.
GE is very careful who it sponsors – normally done in conjunction with developing new technology so will be interesting to see what happens if the rumours are true….
you didn’t recognise GE..?? GE is one of the pioneer manufacturer of aircraft engine..
@peter I never said I like mcdonalds I just said they must be a more globaly recognised brand. I’m actually a chef so mcdonalds are the bane of my life not just because so many people eat there but because we know nowadays that depending on what you eat you can add many years to your life expectancy and so i wish that everyone in the world would eat healthily do regular exercise and you will be happy for it . In tai chi, chi energy is know as happy energy because the more of it you have the happyer you become as a by product. That is why buddha *always* smiles. There’s no mystic secret to it. If you eat properly and exercise you will gain the same energy that tai chi teaches you to grow and focus in it’s own way, if you have more energy you will be happyer. 🙂
Yeah JT I completely forgot google that was pretty silly, i’m not so sure that apple is as big though. It’s in fashion at the moment in MEDC’s but i suspect not as hot in LEDC’s. Companys like coca cola have no economic boundrys it’s available to almost everyone in the world.
Joe, do you have any idea if Tony F was sending some of his crew to talk/see some of the boys & girls at RIM. Quite a few of his Lotus crew [around 12 or so] were on my Toronto flight back home right after the race & after seeing them I’d figure that they might be off for a drive to Waterloo at some point in time Monday.
Brawley,
Maybe, but I suspect it was just changing planes. Toronto is not an unusual routing
Forbes 2011 rank GE as 3rd largest http://www.forbes.com/global2000/list
As reported by you before at the start of the Weekend, the deal was now announced. With this being heralded as a technological cooperation with Team Lotus and Air Asia.