Phil Hill 1927 - 2008 - American's Formula One Champion.

Sad, but true - the news is that Phil Hill, the first American to win a Formula One World Drivers Championship, passed away at 10:30 this morning. Hill was 81 years old and lived a long and competitive life - including winning the LeMans 24 race ('58 & '62) and was a prolific automotive journalist that contributed volumes of text to Road & Track. At a time when too many racers expired at the wheel, Phil Hill pushed on, made history, and lived to tell about it.

Got something to say, a memory, or a kind word to his family?
http://www.philhill.com/remember_2.html

He will be missed - especially for his contribution to "doing the donut" (hint, it's 28 seconds in).

F1 Coverage: Street racing Valencia style

Monaco seems to be first to mind when thinking about temporary street races in Formula One - certainly more so than the US Grand Prix when it was run though the backyards of old people in Arizona. However, Valencia has little in common with the Principality... only that they are both high priced locales and run their circuits to blast along high priced waterfronts. You see, for every tight 1st and 2nd gear corners at Monaco there are long straights, wide corners, and generous braking zone with which to set up a pass or overtake before the corner. F1 officials suggest that Valencia's average speed over the lap will be around 140 mph. Compared with Monaco's 96 mph the difference is staggering.

Of course, like Monaco, this is a temporary circuit run on public roads - so dramatic shifts in camber, changes in road surface, negligible run off areas, and the ever-present concrete barriers that line the circuit threaten DNF in a very real way. .

Opening practice for the Valencia-hosted European Grand Prix starts Friday, August 22.

F1 Coverage: Mechanics of the Deal - Alonso to Ferrari

Santander, a Spanish bank, has announced that it will be terminating its sponsorship of McLaren Formula One next year - a deal that, according to the German magazine Sport Bild is worth up to €25m per season.

It would seem that Santander's money has been well spent by McLaren as reflected in their results over the past two seasons - so why would Santander jump ship after only 2 seasons? Well, Santander's sponsorship of McLaren coincided with Fernando Alonso's signing with the team from Woking. Although, if you follow F1 you know that Alonso left after only one year to return to Reault from where he'd enjoyed two previous championships.

Driver contracts are easy, although expensive, to get out of. Corporate level sponsorship... not so much. I don't believe that the Santander contract specifically tied their deal to McLaren with an Alonso contingency, but F1 can be incredibly nationalistic at times and there is very little reason for the Spanish bank to be associated with a British team employing British and Finnish drivers.

Alonso, meanwhile, has been biding his time mid-field in a rather dull Renault. Similarly, Felipe Massa has been circling at or about the same grid locations in Scuderia Ferrari's fabulous F2008 - and his wet weather drive at Silverstone was embarrassing.

Ok, back to the Santander story line - not interesting news that some bank pulling their sponsorship? Well, what is interesting is where they are going - Ferrari. And from that, the implications of the deal seem to indicate that Ferrari have agreed a deal with Alonso for 2009.

Interesting... Alonso will leave Renault at the end of 2008 to become Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari team-mate in 2009. Two world champions at Ferrari!

Ferrari traditionally announces its driver line-up for the next season at the Italian GP at Monza, in September. But for now, all intelligence points to Alonso being fawned by the Tifosi in 2009. And Ferrari may well have signed Santander to pick up his €30m retainer.

Tobacco Sponsorship

A few days ago I mentioned that Lotus introduced tobacco sponsorship to Formula One - 1968 / Imperial Tobacco's Gold Leaf brand of smokes. Due to in-place advertising restrictions on tobacco brands sponsorship became the dominant marketing force for tobacco manufacturers. The growth was explosive, the tobacco money was huge, and the impact lasting. Given the expansive tobacco budgets pit lane quickly became a contest between those with and those without - and operating budgets swelled to as much as $300M a year. Coincidentally, these boom years coincided with amazing developments in engine technology, aerodynamic understanding, Non-tobacco teams simply couldn't compete on the smaller budgets.

In 1976 however Germany outlawed tobacco sponsorship, followed in 1984 by Great Britain and France in 1992. Oddly, as the global shift in tobacco marketing headed to greater restrictions, more tobacco manufacturers sought refuge in the world of Formula One. As a result, the very savvy Bernie Ecclestone was able to create a temporary safe haven and get exemptions for teams for a number of years.

Craftily, as car designers and engineers find their way through the rule books looking for loop holes and the unique advantage, so too have Formula One marketers sound escape clauses for marketing tobacco products without promoting them. The first instance of this that I can remember was redesigning both the camel image and the Joe Camel likeness for placement on the cars at banned races.


Significantly more successful is the wordplay iteration that Jordan F1 created for Benson & Hedges by modifying their script-based logo:
"Bitten & Hisses" in 1997 - mascot was the snake Hissing Sid
"Buzzing Hornets" 1998 - 2000 - mascot was a hornet
"Bitten Heroes" 2001 - mascot was a shark
"Be On Edge" (BENSON & HEDGES) from 2002 onwards

Marlboro, the long term sponsor of Scuderia Ferrari as taken a more graphically subliminal approach. Because of the now European-wide ban on marketing, they are not allow to display their image, likeness, brand assets, or logo anywhere on the car or uniforms. They have however substituted the spelled out Marlboro for black bars, kept the red and white color scheme, but replaced their white chevron with white boxes. No one can claim that there is anything remotely brand oriented, and yet the identification is unmistakable. Since Marlboro's contact runs till 2011 it remains to be seen what innovative ways they will market their brand in the highly regulated world of tobacco advertising. Oh, the budget for 5 years = $1B