Allianz to sponsor safety car (Pictures)

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Allianz has extended its Formula 1 sponsorship deal and will have its logos displayed on the safety and medical cars.

The financial services company which specialises in insurance first became involved in F1 sponsorship through Williams in 2000.

According to Allianz:

An evaluation of various global sponsorship platforms and of Allianz’s activities over the past 10 years has shown that this engagement remains the strongest platform for global brand building and the communication of key safety messages to a worldwide audience.

Bernie Ecclestone, safety car driver Bernd Maylander and Allianz vice president and head of global brand management Dr. Christian Deuringer revealed the new cars in Singapore.

Read more: Mercedes SLS AMG to lead the pack as new F1 safety car in 2010 (Pictures)

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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36 comments on “Allianz to sponsor safety car (Pictures)”

  1. thats a good call actually! Must be a heck of a lot cheaper than choosing a team.

    1. Very good point :)

    2. Only disadvantage is, it sounds a tad conflicting to have an insurance company hope for many safety car situations to see their logo ;-o

      1. istn williams also an “allianz”

  2. They are going to get their money’s worth in Singapore, most likely.

    1. Do you know something?

      What corner and what lap? I’d like to get some money on it this time round.

      1. If Piquet turns up in red…. wink wink… :D

  3. As long as it’s not forced that the commentators call:
    And here comes |The Allianz Safety Car|
    Then yes, it makes good a good decision from Allianz. Sponsoring the Medi Merc and Safety Merc will be much cheaper than sponsoring the same company’s factory GP team!!

  4. I’m surprised it has taken this long to get a sponser on it. Most other series have the saftey car sponsered up the wah-zoo

    1. Possibly because in most other series, at least in the U.S., the safety car does more laps than some of the backmarkers, pratically.

  5. Yeh indy car under the “full course caution” (why? just say saftey or pace car -anyhoo) happens about 4 times a race :P

    Raise some eyebrows if Piquet Jr comes back to the grid with allianz backing!

  6. This is getting a bit like Indy Car. Soon enough I can envisage a situation like this:

    And the five Eon powered red lights go out and the Santander Spanish GP is underway…. and Hamilton spins off into the Coca Cola endorsed gravel trap, bringing out the yellow flags- brought to you by Burger King! Try the all new Whopper today for just $5.99!… the Allianz Car peels off into the HSBC Pit Lane so its time for the restart, powered by Sony… the LG timing screens are showing Mark Webber has secured the DHL fastest lap, which is sure to propel him up the Castrol Rankings…

    and so on

    1. Just a few extra things:

      Lewis Hamilton in his Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes is in the Cocacola gravel, but he has Vodafones latest Contract package with unlimited minutes so he can call the AA!
      Mark Webber driving the Red Bull – who incidently have released a new flavour, try it today!!

    2. Contentor for comment of the day, surely

      1. I’ll second that. Comment of the day definitely. Ned you are a funny man!

    3. The future is bleak and long-winded.

      1. No- The future’s bright. The future’s orange :)

        1. This future is brought to you by FANTA!

      2. Hey Keith, these comments are technically breaking the terms and conditions which clearly stae “No advertising.” ;)

        1. Good job I’m easy-going :-)

          1. Haha, That’s why we love ya! :P

    4. Someone in my town drives an Indy Safety Car from a couple years ago. It’s all painted up in a red-white-blue livery and has monstrous Honda logos and INDY logos all over it. I see it parked at the grocery store every so often.

      1. Never seen it before but a quick Google image search has found this:
        http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/2665663254_f9e680d0a0.jpg
        to be the car you mean :D

        1. Close. Didn’t even think of looking up a picture. It’s this one. Looks funny parked at the grocery store:
          http://www.flickr.com/photos/daredevil26/1409755091/lightbox/

    5. Hahahaha Ned that’s actually brilliant, but also depressing :(

  7. Why does everyone think this is such a great idea?
    Teams are complaining how hard it is to find sponsors and Bernie goes and gets one of the biggest to put their logo on non-racing cars. Go figure.
    I wonder if the contract fine-print has stipulations for number of safety car appearances.

    1. Bernie just knows how to do good business :)

    2. Well for an insurance company, surely it makes a ton of sense.

      Trying to project an image of confidence and reassurance, that you’ll be there when things get sticky to sort hings out … as opposed to trying to flog car insurance and responsible driving with your name on the smokey rear wing of a car buried in the tyre-barriers upside down.

      1. You do have a point there.

    3. Well, half of the FOM income/profit goes to the teams (should be more, but that’s Bernie) so i suppose a bigger pot of money benefits them as well in the end.

  8. I hoped that I would find out some juicy technical details about these cars.

  9. I wouldn’t say that it’s a “good decision”… It surely must be cheaper than sponsoring a team, but that is fair considering that you don’t see a safety car as much as you see an F1 car during a race.
    Think about it : you only see the safety car during an average of 3 to 5 laps per race. Plus the camera rarely focus on the safety car.
    And in my opinion, when a safety car is out, it means that there is a race incident somewhere on the track : so I think people are more focusing their mind on the incident itself, on the race outcome, on the strategies, and on everything else that’s gonna happen when the race starts back… What I’m trying to say I don’t think that people are gonna “perceive” this Allianz ad as they will with a “Vodafone” written on a McLaren.

    On the contrary, a team sponsor can be seen on the car, on the driver’s suit, well in fact, everywhere where the team is.

    That’s of course my opinion ;)

    1. Totally agree. Doesn’t make much advertising sense. I guess it didn’t cost them much more than their other sponsorship commitments.

      1. On the other hand, thinking of Allianz when hearing of a crash does make sense from a sponsorship angle!

  10. Nice to see that the safety car is getting some sponsorship. It may have cost less.

    Now the question remains that is Bernd Mayländer is bringing sponsor with him to keep his seat for the safety car in the future as Allianz is a German Company?

  11. So we have sponsoring on safety car. But why does it have to be so ugly?

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