To the 588 million unique viewers who tune into the world’s most watched annual sporting event there is excitement, speed, glamour and the subtle messaging that ‘comes to you from our sponsors’. Without the flow of cash into teams from the manufacturers and the range of sponsors, the budgets required to go racing would not be met. Cash is racing’s raw material and affords the teams the latest and best technologies that money can buy. In 2007 there were 310 Formula 1 sponsors. Of these, ninety-seven companies paid a total of $834 million to get exposure on Formula 1 cars. Off-car exposure totalled another $64 million.

However, sponsors do more than supply funds to Formula 1 teams and in most cases the relationships go much deeper. For this reason the teams tend to refer to their corporate supporters more often as ‘partners’ or ‘investors’ rather than ‘sponsors’.

Interestingly, of the ten teams on the grid in 2008, only Williams F1 totally relied upon commercial investment for its operation. While the other teams all have parent companies selling products and services, Williams F1 is purely a racing team.