McLaren apologise to FIA

On this day in F1 – 13th December 2007 The curtain finally fell on the Spygate scandal with McLaren’s unreserved apology to the FIA and Ferrari. In a grovelling letter, McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh expressed his team’s “sincere regret” adding it “apologised wholeheartedly” to the FIA for the embarrassment caused. The letter satisfied FIA president … Read more

That’s Just Not Cricket

Brought to you by TJ13 Courtroom Reporter & Crime Analyst: Adam Macdonald. Any readers who are cricket fans will have struggled to miss the controversy of two weeks ago.  English all-rounder, Stuart Broad, elected not to ‘walk’ even though he knew he had edged the ball to, firstly the wicket keeper and then the slip. … Read more

Marlboro McLaren becomes McLaren Nicorette, COTA business plan highly optimistic, Lewis leaving was all about the money, Austin Council votes to tax COTA, New F1 film for release in Austin

Vodafone scale down sponsorship:  It has been widely rumoured that Vodafone will be pulling out of its 6 year relationship with McLaren at the end of 2013. This has been considered to be worth as much as $75m a year, which is stratospheric compared to the fee’s most sponsors of F1 teams pay. Joe Seward has done a great article on this today, the link is at the end if this section.

The points worthy of comment are, Glaxo Smith Klien (GSK) has been extending its relationship with McLaren, and in a big announcement in the summer the announced a “ground-breaking collaboration” which will apply McLaren’s winning expertise to the needs of GSK, the aim being to help it to function more efficiently with more efficient planning processes and better modelling tools to drive faster decision-making. This includes the construction of a learning facility called the ‘McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance’, which is under construction at McLaren’s Headquarters in Woking.they announcedis setting up.

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