Fuel To The Fire

Something that caught my sight today on PlanetF1.com. The site is okay for F1 news, more tabloid-like than the usual F1 sites. A decent enough source for F1 news on the odd day. I make a point of dropping by the main F1 sites to keep up to date, compare and contrast.

The piece in question was an editorial done by Andrew Davies titled ‘The FIA: Not taking any chances” concerning the recent racism issues in Spain. What caught my eye was this statement:

“if you went into a branch of Banco Santander you'd see a very telling poster. Given that Hamilton arrived on the F1 scene like a rock star, you'd expect to see a poster of the McLaren team featuring both Fernando and Lewis. Nope. The poster they used in branches was Alonso and reserve driver Pedro de la Rosa.”

One hand he shows facts, on another he shows ignorance. Sure it’s great to point out that Santander did not promote Hamilton in Spain. Shame on them for using Spain’s top F1 drivers on their posters in their home nations, shame on them! (Yes, that was sarcasm, since I know text at times fails to convey it.) Does Mister Davies not watch British television? The Abbey adverts showcase Hamilton and Hamilton alone, and – wait a minute! Abbey is part of the Santander group! Then there are also the Vodafone adverts over here which only feature Hamilton despite been a McLaren sponsor! The only advert that the two appeared together in was that ‘friendly’ race ad – how ironic that one came to be!

It really puts his comment into context. Of course a sponsor will want to maximize the popularity of home grown talent. It’s just good business sense. To point at them and try to in some way blame them for not sticking Hamilton onto the post thus adding fuel to the fire is wrong.