Williams Thinks Outside the Box

Posted on Saturday 29 May 2010

The influx of new teams in Formula One has forced The Establishment to think of ways in which to differentiate itself from the pack. Ferrari trades on its history and McLaren on its world champion driver pairing, but the rest of the teams have had to think outside the box and that’s where Williams F1 sets itself apart. We talked to Dominic Reilly, the man tasked with finding the team's racing budget to find out just what Williams is doing to attract potential sponsors.

In October 2009 Williams F1 became the first sports team in the world to disclose its carbon footprint when it signed up to the Carbon Disclosure Project. The team took this step primarily to cut its carbon footprint (a second measurement will be taken in October ’10), but it also wanted to highlight the team’s green credentials.

“Many companies that would benefit from an association with F1 feel that they can’t do it,” says Dominic Reilly, Williams F1’s head of marketing. “There’s this perception that F1 has a big environmental impact, but that’s not the case. We travel a lot, but so too do many other sports in the world, and only one percent of our carbon emissions are from the cars themselves.”

To meet its CDP target of reducing carbon emissions year-on-year, Williams F1 has had to change the manner in which it goes racing and how it operates its factory. Team personnel, for example, now fly to races on the most fuel-efficient planes available and waste has been cut to a minimum at the team’s Grove headquarters. But Williams F1, through various sister companies, is also investigating ways in which to work for the wider good of the environment.

Williams Hybrid Power (WHP) has the patent on a magnetically-loaded composite flywheel, which almost won the recent Nurburgring 24 Hour race in the back of a Porsche 911. The car was 20 percent more fuel efficient than its rivals and, when viewed in the wider context of the everyday road user, the system could make a massive difference on a global scale.

There is also the Williams Technology Centre (WTC) at the Qatar Science and Technology Park in Doha, Qatar. The WTC is researching larger flywheels for industrial applications such as on buses, trains and in lifts.

“Although they are separate arms of the company,” says Reilly, “our environmental programmes work well with F1 because there’s no other sport in the world that produces the technology that can have an impact on reducing emissions. There is a cross-pollination between the two sides of the business.”

Going green isn’t Williams F1’s only Unique Selling Point because the team also offers unrivalled Business-To-Business opportunities for its partners. It recently introduced Philips to McLaren sponsor Hilton Hotels and the end result was a €100 million deal between the two companies. But lots of smaller deals are done on a regular basis, as the team’s long-term partnership with Accenture proves. Accenture’s main reason for being in F1 is to meet other businesses and it has been a partner of the team for 16 years.

“The way we operate with our partners is unique,” continues Reilly. “We are big at introducing people from different companies and we try to associate ourselves only with companies that have a similar business ethos. All of the companies we’re talking to about next season are Fortune 500, and it’s no coincidence that many of our existing partners also sponsor golf.”

Times are a changing in F1 and, as ever, Williams F1 is leading the way.