NISSAN-OWNED luxury car brand Infiniti has expanded its team partnership position with Red Bull Racing just seven months after the original partnership, worth $30m over two years, was announced.
From 2012, Infiniti branding will feature more prominently on Red Bull Racing’s Formula One cars with enhanced logos on the side of the chassis and the top of the cockpit.
The Infiniti name and logo will also be displayed on new areas of the drivers’ overalls, as well as on team equipment.
In the June issue of Frontiers, Simon Sproule, Nissan’s CVP global marketing communications, revealed that the campaign’s single objective was to boost global brand awareness for Infiniti.
The brand, he said, measured Infiniti awareness in key markets like China, Europe and others before the F1 programme started with further measurements to be taken two or three times during the season.
The results have clearly been to Infiniti’s liking. “In just seven months, the results have exceeded even our most ambitious targets, leading to us to becoming the most highly-exposed automotive brand in Formula One this season,” said Andy Palmer, executive vice-president, Nissan Motor Company.
“As we look ahead to the second year of our partnership with Red Bull Racing, we are now extending into exciting new areas of technical and product collaboration."
Whether this eventually leads to an Infiniti engine replacing the current Renault engine remains open to speculation. If it does, it should be win-win for the Renault-Nissan alliance since Renault holds a 43.4 per cent stake in Nissan, while Nissan holds 15 per cent of Renault.