MOTORSPORT: Ford committed to motorsport in 2012

The boss of Ford Australia Bob Graziano says he will continue to support V8 Supercar teams – despite recent speculation that the company was reviewing its funding.

It is annual sponsorship review time for Ford and some of its race teams became twitchy following comments by Ford’s motorsport manager at the last round of the series at Phillip Island two weeks ago.

Chris Styring told V8 Supercars’ Big Pond Sport the days when a race win guaranteed sponsorship were over.

“It’s vastly different to what it was in the past. It’s just not how it works anymore,” he told the website. “Winning is important for sure … but everything is scrutinised as to whether it fits with the brand and our values, and that is Ford’s global directive.”

Having visited the workshops of the Queensland-based Ford race teams a fortnight ago, Graziano told motoring.com.au: “At this point we’re still just trying to understand the sport and what it does for us and what we can do for it.

“I’m comfortable with the teams that we have and what they do to represent the brand, we’ll obviously continue to look at it.”

When asked if Ford was considering a decrease in funding across its teams next year, Graziano said: “That’s not the plan right now. We’re always looking at our budgets and what we spend our money on, but right now no change [is] planned at this point.”

He said there was nothing unusual about the sponsorship reviews:

“We look at them year in and year out, they’re generally annual reviews. We have discussions around about now. I wouldn’t speculate that it’s anything untoward. We also just announced an extension to 2016 for the Geelong Cats [AFL football team]”.

The director of Ford public affairs, Sinead McAlary, said: “The point that Chris [Styring] was trying to make was that it’s not just about winning races. The teams involved have to help us promote our brand as well.

“Obviously a winning team helps that, but there’s a lot of other things we’re doing. This year we’re promoting the new vehicles we’re launching via signage on the windscreen banners on the race cars.

“The audience is there, [but] they don’t just buy Falcons and Commodores. In fact a lot of them don’t buy Falcons and Commodores.

“So we’re exposing the rest of our range to those people who are predisposed to the brand in the first place.”

When motoring.com.au asked Graziano if he regretted Ford’s decision to let the championship-winning Triple 8 team slip from Ford’s grasp to Holden three years ago – a decision that was made before his time – he said:

“You look at that, [but] they [Triple 8] obviously felt they had another opportunity and they took that. We’re proud of the history that we’ve had in the sport and the number of championships that we’ve won and we’re just going to continue to have to build on that going forward.”

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