A key figure within the title sponsor of the Audi Formula 1 team has criticised the current livery choice of Ferrari due to its sponsorship choice.
The German marque is making its F1 debut this year, replacing the previous entry of Sauber, ending the Swiss squad’s 32-year involvement in the sport.
One of the team’s early tasks was to find a new title sponsor, with crypto casino firm Stake cutting its ties with the team upon Sauber’s withdrawal.
It chose banking firm Revolut as its title sponsor, the British-based company completing the team’s full name – Audi Revolut F1 Team.
And its Chief Marketing Officer, Antoine Le Nel, explained to the Business of Sport podcast the importance of a team and its sponsor sharing a sense of uniformity.
“The brand identity is very important,” he said. “Revolut, we are very committed to design, we’re very committed to the user experience and so on, and it needs to fit with it.
“No offence, but I think what HP and Ferrari have done to their cars is not good from a design perspective.
“How can you put blue on a red car? This is not good.”
“I’d say big kudos to Mastercard and McLaren, I think that is a great branding thing.
“[Google] Chrome as well, what they’ve done with the wheel and so on, I think there are brands that are doing a really good job and that works really well.
“Then, when I look at the Audi and Revolut brand identity, it felt very natural. So that’s the first element.”
Audi and Revolut share aim to be the ‘disruptors’
Le Nel underlined how the Revolut and Audi brands have come together through a shared sense of values and feeling of being an underdog against big names.
“The narrative is super-important,” he said. “We at Revolut are here to disrupt banking and to win against incumbents.
“And Audi is this. Audi is amazing from that perspective because they are entering a sport that is arguably the hardest sport on the planet at the moment.
“They come from zero and they are building their car themselves. It’s not like Cadillac, who is buying the whole car and so on, Audi is building everything.
“The whole chassis, the whole engine, the gearbox, the power unit, everything is made by themselves.
“It’s exactly like Revolut. We build everything ourselves: we go from the ground and we build up. That’s exactly what Audi is doing.
“The alignment was super natural for us. The important part, as well, is talking to the team. With Audi, the stars were aligned.
“We were working towards the same goal, and it felt like such a natural sponsorship.”
READ MORE – Exclusive: How Jonathan Wheatley has helped put Audi in good shape for F1 debut
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