When we started doing TVR Tuscans we had the whole truck done in JG livery and they weren’t aware that we were going to do that kind of stuff. At the time, we had a good budget for doing Tuscans, but the buzz word in the paddock was that we’d got a quarter of a million pounds of sponsorship. To run a TVR Tuscan at that time was probably £80-100,000 for the season so it was the image that we gave which has rolled over and we have built on.
Crash.net:
You say there its always been under promise and over achieve, so you managed to get a cheque for a quarter of a millions pounds despite telling them you’d be rubbish?
MJ:
[Laughs] No, no – they’ve never done that!
It started off very gradually and when we were doing EuroCar, while I’d never disclose any amounts of money, it was a very modest amount. They were a small slot on the car and I’m so proud that in the length of time we have been doing this that they have gone from being a very small sponsor to being the title sponsor on a two-car touring car team as well as sponsoring events like they have done when we were in
FIA GT and as they have now at
Donington Park.
They are still so enthusiastic about it and it I think one important thing is that as a team, we have never taken the micky out of them. We have never gone back to them, even in our darkest year of doing FIA when the budget I though we’d need was totally out of bed. I’d come to a figure because I wanted to go and do it and so did the Jones twins and they said they could do it. As it was, I was so short but I never went back to them to ask for more money and I think that counts for a lot because when I shake their hand and that is it for the next year, they know what we’ll be delivering.
Crash.net:
In motor sport, as in any sport, sponsors come and go on a yearly basis so how fulfilling is it for you that this deal has gone on for so long and had become the success story that it is?
MJ:
Fantastically so because it means our whole business ethics are right inline with John Guest’s. In the early days I used to be quite worried coming to the end of a season because I would think to myself 'God, they will have had loads of proposals', and they have had loads from BSB teams, from touring car teams and even from teams I have driven for in the past and who are trying to take the sponsor from under your nose. A lot of people would try to do that but I would never, ever do such a thing. However, some people aren’t straight.
