Traction Marketing Looks at Monza

Welcome to Traction Marketing,

We are a new blog focusing on the F1 circus through the lens of marketing and advertising. However as passionate fans of the sport, there will be personal views and race-talk mixed in to the business side of things.

Next up for the F1 circus is Monza for the Italian GP, the final european stop before heading east for the final few rounds. This comes a week after Red Bull announced Daniel Ricciardo as the replacement for the retiring Mark Webber for the 2014 season.

While there were rumours of Kimi or Alonso heading to Red Bull, Daniel was the only real candidate for the drive. I suggest this because to overlook Daniel or JEV for the second RBR seat would undermine the whole Red Bull Junior Program and the Torro Rosso team.

Red Bull have spent millions on cultivating and developing these young stars from lower formula and karts into the next world champions. There has been a conveyor belt of drivers try and fail to make the grade at all levels, for various reasons and this can be seen through those who have been moved on from Torro Rosso. So far there has only been one successful candidate they have moulded into the ultimate Red Bull Formula 1 driver. Sebastian Vettel. And that worked out fairly well for them.

So, why bother having this extensive set up if you are just going to hire another driver anyway.

Fox Sports Asia

With one of the most sought after seats filled, what next for silly season? There are seats unconfirmed with Massa’s seat looking iffy, Kimi isn’t certain at Lotus, could he head back to Maranello again? I don’t think so as Kimi’s personal brand fits so well with the Lotus team, he can be Kimi, resulting in a win-win situation for both brands, if you are looking at Kimi as a brand. He can just decide not to appear at the young driver test, call in “sick” and not to PR work on the Thursday before a race. Seeing him head back to partner Alonso will not be an ideal solution for any party.

And with the shake up of rule changes for next season, who knows who will be fast out of the box. There may be some surprises thrown up.