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Porsche to buy Williams F1 team


reddahaydn
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20-30% of McLaren is for sale and they are closer to the pointy end than Williams (remember Williams came last, despite the championship winning Mercedes motor in the back of their car)  A partnership with McLaren might get them closer to the front end.

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36 minutes ago, JWM said:

Not a particularly marketing friendly arrangement though, given they compete in road cars. 

I wonder about the marketing value of coming last with Williams.  The Footwork program lasted less than one season as both parties recognised they were destroying each other's brand value.

The two largest markets for Porsche are China and the US; in neither of which is the Williams brand particularly well known.

The McLaren brand has already done the hard work to market its way into these two markets; so there would be greater press coverage (marketing in another name) with the announcement in Porsche's primary markets driven by two well known brands, where as an alliance with Williams would be predominately driven by Porsche's own brand value in China and US so its a large outlay to buy an F1 team to get the same press coverage you would get from doing something cheaper.  

While we may not like it, Porsche is a lifestyle brand that makes it's money from selling SUV's and merchandise.  Currently the majority of the Porsche car production Cayenne, Macan, Panamera, Taycan, Boxster and Cayman do not cross over with McLaren.  2019 was a record sales year for Porsche driven by sales of the Cayenne and Macan up by 29% combined I think.  Selling SUVs is what contributes the most the financially to the brands bottom line. 

Mclaren do not make an SUV and a decent proportion of McLaren owners will also have an SUV and if you can steer them into a Cayenne or Macan that is good business if you are potentially taking market share away from SUV manufacturers such as Range Rover, Mercedes and BMW.

 Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris driving Cayennes to the track would be good marketing for the company. 

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21 minutes ago, Carrera28 said:

I wonder about the marketing value of coming last with Williams. 

🤣 true!!

21 minutes ago, Carrera28 said:

The two largest markets for Porsche are China and the US; in neither of which is the Williams brand particularly well known.

My assumption in this scenario is that they'd buy the team and rename it to "Porsche F1",  or at least "Porsche Williams" or similar. As you say though, they would have to pump serious money into it, and be prepared to play a long game until it's winning.

21 minutes ago, Carrera28 said:

Currently the majority of the Porsche car production Cayenne, Macan, Panamera, Taycan, Boxster and Cayman do not cross over with McLaren.  2019 was a record sales year for Porsche driven by sales of the Cayenne and Macan up by 29% combined I think. 

Agree, there's a huge market on the Porsche side they don't complete with, but I meant this more generally for the usual marketing effort to connect your road and race cars (however tenuously, even at the top end) in people's minds... How would this work in the F1 team - a McLaren with a Porsche engine? A Porsche with a McLaren engine? It's too messy...

The only way I could see to resolve that would be if Porsche is taking a big stake in all of McLaren and going all in on a Hypercar collaboration together, then linking that to the F1 team - both chassis and engine are neither Porsche or McLaren but both... Ok now I'm really excited... 😁

21 minutes ago, Carrera28 said:

 Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris driving Cayennes to the track would be good marketing for the company. 

No doubt about that.

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Very interesting.

Guess I looked at it differently... Porsche have apparently been flirting with the idea to get into F1. 
Buying an established team, even a poorly performing on, is cheaper than starting from scratch. 
Porsche, being German, would be full of confidence in their own ability - I believe they would think that if they bought Williams, they could turn it around with their own in house knowledge and resources. 
The Williams brand has a lot of following or at least nastalgia in the established f1 countries - Porsche has the following in the two biggest country’s that aren’t focussed on F1. A Marketers wet dream? Ripe for the picking?

Porsche sell SUVs to fund motorsport, just like Ferrari sells sports cars to fund F1  I like to think that even in this day and age, there’s still some linage back to that  

Yes it won’t be cheap... but it’s the biggest motorsport stage on earth... they’d sell a lot more cayennes and Macans if they stepped up to the big boys league  

 

 

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2 hours ago, Airhead said:

Yeah. Never gunna work.

image.thumb.png.4152afab304d343997c278180490137c.png

mclaren tag porsche f1 MP4/2 1984, 85, 86

Fair enough. In my defence, I was 3yrs old then... 😂

Mind you, McLaren didn’t sell road cars then did they?

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7 minutes ago, reddahaydn said:

Shouldn’t matter anyway ... both Mercedes and renault sell road cars and mclaren is happy to use their engines, and they’re happy to sell mclaren their engines. 

Yeah, true, seems they don’t mind. 

There’s some interesting older articles around saying some sort of entry has been considered in the recent past: https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/f1i.com/news/365099-porsche-reveals-just-how-close-it-came-to-entering-f1.html/amp

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Poor investment for Porsche. Why would Porsche be interested in buying into an overregulated race series with politically biased management. F1 has been on a downward trend for a long time. Much better to invest in Cup car racing, Formula E or return to endurance racing. Why not invest in a Boxster/Cayman one design race series? 

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