{"id":761781,"date":"2026-06-26T05:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T05:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/761781\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T05:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T05:09:14","slug":"audi-aims-to-bring-formula-1-to-the-people-with-first-year-team-sponsors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/761781\/","title":{"rendered":"Audi aims to \u2018bring Formula 1 to the people\u2019 with first-year team, sponsors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aided in part by the American agency Legends, Audi\u2019s first-year F1 team believes it is off to a good start in its bid to leverage the racing series into more car sales and influence in popular culture.<\/p>\n

The Volkswagen brand is one of the new F1 teams this year alongside Cadillac<\/a>, but Audi took over a pre-existing team in the Switzerland-based outfit previously known as Sauber. To help get its commercial operations up and running and build what it termed a \u201cmulti-brand powerhouse,\u201d Audi worked in recent years with Legends and Liechtenstein-based WWP Group to find its first batch of sponsors.<\/p>\n

For a title sponsor, Audi landed the London-based financial services company Revolut in a deal that\u2019s likely worth mid-eight figures in annual rights fees. Other partners include Visit Qatar, BP (and its Castrol brand), Adidas, Hyatt Hotels, Gillette, NinjaOne, Paulaner beer, Piquadro luggage and the Perk technology company.<\/p>\n

Stefano Battiston, the CMO of Audi F1, has been with the team since the Sauber era and helped oversee an approach where it serviced its final sponsors for Sauber while also trying to land new brands for the Audi project. Audi F1 Team is a now a full factory team, meaning it is owned by a major carmaker who supplies its own engines, so it\u2019s a major expenditure and gamble.<\/p>\n

\u201cAudi is using Formula 1 as a global stage and also to make the new understanding of the brand somehow visible,\u201d Battiston said, \u201cso we worked quite intensively of bringing the new design philosophy to life — \u2018The Radical Next\u2019 as it\u2019s called — to have that Audi identity within us and to be very closely [tied to Audi]. And to ultimately add an emotional appeal to the brand and reach new target groups and to create global relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sponsorships in F1 help teams spend on race cars and personnel, and Audi\u2019s goal is to be able to compete for a championship by 2030. Battiston said the team also looks at sponsors as key stakeholders to help accomplish its goal of being the team that \u201cinstead of bringing people to Formula 1 … brings Formula 1 to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AudiAudi F1 held sponsor events inside Hard Rock Stadium during race week in Miami. Audi F1 Team <\/p>\n

This season, the team held events away from the racetrack at Melbourne and Miami, collaborating on special offers with small coffee companies, bakeries and delis; having a fan hub on a floating venue in a river; and commissioning street art and DJ sessions. Also, it\u2019s working with partners that make consumer goods to create co-branded licensed products (Battiston confirmed that Gillette is among the possibilities) and pushing them to work together on B2B projects, similar to how the Audi F1 e-commerce shop is run by Adidas, which worked with Revolut to integrate its Revolut Pay as a checkout option in markets where Revolut operates.<\/p>\n

Battiston, who declined to give revenue figures when asked how the team was performing relative to its goals, said its \u201cdeveloped partner pyramid\u201d has led to \u201ca good ecosystem\u201d of \u201cgood brands\u201d and \u201cleaders in their industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I think from the quality point of view, we\u2019re happy with the partners we have on board,\u201d he said. \u201cI think they reflect the assets, our values at Audi, where it\u2019s all about technology, innovation, premiumness. So I think that we\u2019re happy with the quality of partners. [But] of course, we enter as a challenger.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aided in part by the American agency Legends, Audi\u2019s first-year F1 team believes it is off to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[584,49,48,578,576,577,82,59690],"class_list":["post-761781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-audi","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-volkswagen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}