Red Bull unveiled its 2022 livery on Wednesday and along with it a new title sponsor in technology company, Oracle.
The team will be officially called Oracle Red Bull Racing in 2022 through 2026 after signing a five year sponsorship deal, which sees a significant amount of the car covered in large ‘Oracle’ decals, including the sidepods and rear-wing.
Title sponsors were commonplace in the sport many years ago, but have become rarer, with just a handful of teams running such deals. They were also very lucrative with companies spending tens of millions to secure prime sponsorship real estate on the car.
McLaren’s Vodafone deal was one of the highest paying at £30 million per season ($40m). That ended in 2013. Similar deals now would cost far less with smaller teams accepting title sponsors for as little as £5m per season.
So news that Oracle is paying a reported £74m ($100m) per season to sponsor Red Bull might come as a shock to much of the paddock. With a budget cap of $140m this year, the deal alone accounts for 71 per cent of the team’s budget – although that’s not strictly true as there are expenses that sit outside the budget cap, such as driver salaries – which will run into the tens of millions for new champion Max Verstappen – and marketing costs.
Besides the money, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is hoping to cash in on Oracle’s technology, which the team already put to good use in 2021.
“Oracle Cloud enabled us to make race-day decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship,” said Horner.
“Discovering and reacting to opportunities quickly, is crucial to our success on and off the track, and Oracle is integral in that effort. Every element of our performance is driven by data analysis.
“Having Oracle as our title partner shows the confidence we have in their expertise and their ability to deliver a true competitive advantage.”
Oracle will play an even greater role in 2022 as the team takes advantage of Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure, allowing the team to expand the volume and variety of data they analyse and increase the speed at which simulations run in order to better predict tactics.
Good for them. But that’s still nothing compared to the $500 million per SEASON that Philip Morris International paid Ferrari for decades. Basically, PMI would buy the entire car, then resell the spaces to other brands. So what was seen on Ferrari cars over the past few decades had actually gone through PMI, not Ferrari.
And let’s not forget the massive amount of money Honda was paying McLaren, combined with Alonso’s $40m/per season salary, which IIRC is about the same as the Red Bull/Oracle deal.
Which reminds me, it’s been six years now since “sponsorship guru” Zak Brown took over McLaren, criticized Ron Dennis for not having a title sponsor, and kept promising to announce one. 🤔