F1 » Williams lose sponsor, still anti-customer cars

Well, RBS should drop their sponsorship by about 60%, as that''s the amount of the bank now owned by the tax payer, frankly I don''t see any bank being able to justify backing any sport if the tax payer has just spent billions bailing them out.

The only good thing about all this is that it might kill off some football teams..

It has been said that Williams object because of the distribution of TV money would affect them adversly if customer cars are allowed. I think that if someone wanted to buy one of their cars, their tune would change, except that unfortunately, people only want to buy successful cars. It's a bit catch 22 really.

Have to agree with you AL, the banks are taking the p*** sponsoring F1 after being bailed out by us tax payers - and they still make you jump through hoops for a morgtage.

with santander moving to ferrari, are ferrari getting less than mclaren were demanding????

Here's a quote from Wikipedia about the first car Frank ran in F1:

"After Williams backed Courage in a successful 1968 Formula Two season, he PURCHASED a Brabham Formula One car for Courage in 1969."

'Nuff said.

jonovo, there were quite a lot of customer cars in the past. march were very prolific.

Richard, the point I'm trying to make is that Frank is just a little bit hypocritical in his opposition to customer cars. After all, he got his start in Formula One running a customer car. I realize times have changed so I cant fault Frank too much. However, it now appears that times are changing again and customer cars are starting to make more and more sense.

I suggested a few weeks ago that new teams could use 'customer' engines and 'customer' chassis for their first few years of F1. looks like the engine idea has been superceded but I still think the chassis thing could be a goer - back to 'kit cars' I guess, but better than no F1. And I mean from an INDEPENDANT supplier such as Dallara or Panoz

Yes, FW started off as a customer team, but they don't have the Concorde Agreement back then.

Is running another teams car from a prior year considered a customer car? To me that seems like a somewhat reasonable exception. You could run a "used" car but not a brand new customer car.

It may be time to rename the contructors championship to the team championship. I know the teams put great value on the constructors championship but are there actually any fans that get more excited about the constructors championship than the drivers championship?