I don’t want to be complacent about it, but they would never do anything with someone else. I don’t want to be over-cocky with that, but our relationship is such that I’m not always looking over my shoulder wondering who will nick my sponsor.
Crash.net:
You better hope the rest of the season goes to plan so they don’t want to look elsewhere then...
CG:
We’ve even had approaches this year from people in the paddock who are further down the pitlane. You just think why on earth would you want to go and sponsor someone at the back of the grid when you have a two-car father and son team making history? They are people who would be relying on your money but would they go any faster? No, because they haven’t got enough talent. But people will always try and get what they can out of you.
Crash.net:
Thirteen years ago when the sponsorship kicked off, did you ever think it would come this far?
CG:
No [laughs]. I was called across to the chairman’s office and Mr John Guest gave me some files and told me to look through them because I was now looking after a project sponsoring a car with a driver called Mike Jordan. I went home thinking 'I’m a graphic designer. What am I doing sorting out sponsorship for a motor sport team?' But you get hooked in it and you move forwards.
There have been times when have years when you think that surely it will come to an end soon and you can’t see it going to twelve or 13 years. After the
FIA year, I thought would it be a bit much for them? We had only raced in Britain and suddenly after going over to Europe, we thought would that be it and would they feel they had done their time? But we brought it back, kept it fresh and have moved forward again.
Crash.net:
I suppose that is the key thing to a successful partnership because as you say, you need to get some return from the money that is being put in. So when there is a difficult year, the strength of the relationship is really shown.
CG:
I think you’re right. That FIA year, we sponsored Castle Combe so still had the GT cars racing over here. We went from there to
Donington Park to do FIA GT and took 15,500 people to the event which I think was a record in this country at that stage. Then the following weekend we were at the Nurburgring with the LMES. Although we say it was a dark year, it was also a very positive year as in those three weekends alone, we sponsored an event, took 15,000 people to an event and then took a couple of hundred over to Germany. Although there was lots of hard work and a lot of hours involved, there was a lot out of it for us.
Crash.net:
Branding and identity is key to a company so that relationship has now been built where people associate Eurotech with John Guest and when people see a car, they recognise who is straight away. How key has that been for John Guest?
CG:
There has been a lot of hard work. I didn’t start out thinking there was a certain way to do this and I’m sure Mike would agree, but there has been a lot of hard work and we always try to put a lot into any championship we are involved with. We do a lot of giveaways and promotions and we do a lot for children but we don’t aim to just ram John Guest down people’s throats.
