The Williams F1 team insist that their future in the sport will be "positive", despite having to cope with the eventual loss of another of their major sponsors, after RBS confirmed that they would be leaving the sport at the end of the 2010 season.
The beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland, preparing to post a record loss of £28 billion after being buggered sideways more than some by the infamous "credit crunch" announced that they would end their interest in F1 once their current deal with Williams ends at the end of 2010. This will include the doubtless wildly excessive corporate spending in recent years, as well as trackside advertising. Despite the loss of such a big sponsor, and the general lapse in form of the team as a whole in recent years, the CEO of the team, Adam Parr, remained unnecessarily upbeat as he talked about the teams future recently.
"In order for Williams to be competitive and be in the frame for the past two or three years, we have had to spend beyond our means. For the next two years we will not do that, and we will be paying off a significant chunk of debt. We are [now] seeing a scenario where our means are not dissimilar to the rest of F1." he said to autosport.com as he blindly defended the state of the small-budget privateers.
RBS is a big part of the Williams sponsor base, though perhaps not a crucial part. Their deal is believed to contribute around 10% of the team's budget each season, though added to the losses of Petrobras, Lenovo and others over the winter, and the team may find themselves with a sponsor gap second only to BMW's in the near future.
But Parr affirmed that the losses had been countered by increases in spending by other sponsors with the team will tide the team over in the short term. "We had 10 of our partners renew with us," he said while smiling plausibly, "Four of those partners that renewed or extended with us were major upgrades, and they at least doubled their investment 2009 compared to 2008.
RBS's pullout echoes that of fellow messed-up finance types ING, who recently announced that they would end their sponsorship of Renault at the end of the 2009 season.
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