Aramco and Aston Martin are set to bring the heat to Formula 1 in 2024 after signing a five-year partnership in December to make the state-owned oil giant sole title partner of the Aston Martin F1 team. The team hit the tracks for the first time this season earlier this month in Jeddah under its new name Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team.

WHY IT MATTERS:

  • While financial details of the partnership weren’t disclosed, F1 is all about the big bucks: F1 teams are estimated to spend around USD 150 mn in a single season excluding driver salaries, according to AS. F1 teams raked USD 30 bn from sponsorships in the 15 years ending 2019, according to Forbes, and the sport has only grown in popularity since.
  • Besides the big spenders, the exposure is huge: Some 1.55 bn people tuned into F1 in 2021 as cumulative TV audience rose 4% y-o-y from a year earlier, according to F1 data. A F1 Netflix series titled “Drive toSurvive” is also seen as a gateway to the sport, with a survey in 2022 suggesting that more than half of F1 fans in the US say the show was the reason behind their fresh fandom of the motorsports. The hit series also catalyzed a 2.3% growth worldwide in F1 live event viewership, according to a Nielsen study in 2022.

Aston Martin had a blockbuster 2023 season, finishing fifth in the constructor standings with Fernando Alonso bringing home the most podiums among non-Red Bull drivers and finishing fourth in the drivers’ championship to cap off the team’s best ever season. Aramco first partnered up with Aston Martin for the 2022 season alongside IT company Cognizant and saw results after just one season. The partnership helped transform the team from a bottom five contender rarely in the points to a top five team that is fighting for podiums every weekend.

A brief history lesson on the Aston Martin Aramco F1 team: The Sahara Force India

Formula One Team went into administration in 2018. This brought in Canadian b’naire Lawrence Stroll, who offered it a way out of bankruptcy by buying the team and rebranding it to Racing Point F1 team in a bid to keep the pink livery alive for the season. In 2021, the team was rebranded again to Aston Martin after Stroll became the majority shareholder in the British luxury car maker.

Aramco is also F1’s global energy partner undera sponsorship agreement struck in 2020 to mark the oil giant’s first global sponsorship of a major sporting event. The sponsorship came on the cusp of F1’s Sustainability Strategy (pdf) which was launched in 2019.

A look at F1’s sustainable fuels sandbox: F1 plans to deliver 100% sustainable fuels to its constructors’ cars by 2026 as part of its plan to be Net Zero Carbon by 2030. It is set to rely heavily on Aramco with whom they “tested 39 surrogate blends of fuels,” according to F1 CTO Pat Symonds who is quarterbacking this project. Aramco will be making the fuels at two of its plants, one here in Saudi and one in Spain. It will be up to constructors to figure out how they can use this fuel in the most efficient (and fast)way and design their cars accordingly.

It’s much bigger than just racing cars: F1 is not just a weekly or bi-weekly event that involves cars going around the track at blinding speeds — it also doubles up as a research lab for industrial car manufacturing, with technology transfer between the two abundant but is “subtler than bolting bits from one car onto another,” according to Paddy Lowe to Eurosport, former executive director at multi-championship winning Mercedes’ F1 team.

REMEMBER- The Public Investment Fund (PIF) upped its stake in British luxury car maker Aston Martin to 20.5% in November. It also doubled up its stake in Aramco to 16% earlier in March, a transfer of stock worth about USD 164.

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