ringo wrote: ↑24 Jan 2023, 17:34
mendis wrote: ↑23 Jan 2023, 13:28
Tiny73 wrote: ↑23 Jan 2023, 12:58
I think you’re underestimating the power of the LH brand, that’s why they pay top dollar, same as Tom Brady, Ronald, Messi amongst others.
From a business standpoint, I don't understand how Mercedes is going to benefit out of Lewis' marketability or his brand. Mercedes is a massive brand and caters to a certain elite segment in the automobile market. I don't know if some of Mercedes' customers want Lewis to deliver their newly purchased car as he is 7 time WDC. Most brands chase successful F1 team for sponsoring. If Mercedes doesn't win for another couple of years, sponsors disappear even if Lewis is there in the team. That's how it works.
A driver's commercial viability for an F1 team is purely performance oriented. Brands did not throng at Mercedes in 2010-12, despite having a 7 time WDC driving for them. When they started winning, they started making fortune from sponsor deals that not just covered the F1 expenses, but gave profitability, despite their annual F1 spending in the range of 500 million a year.
Red Bull is back to winning ways and they started attracting mega millions sponsor deals.
I have no doubt if Mercedes creates another car with 3 to 5 tenths advantage, even Russell can win championships and the sponsors would flow in thick and fast even if Lewis disappears from the scene.
Marketability works for individual athletes. The more success they get, more marketable they become. Marketability of the driver is no reason for an F1 team to offer fortune deals. It's the speed and how long that speed is going to persist. The younger and faster, the more valuable.
What do you think happens when Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton has 8 driver WC?
It would be same if George wins his first. Like I already mentioned, success brings sponsors, regardless of whether a 7 time WDC becomes 8 or newbee gets crowned. Equally, if success evades for another year, sponsorship money would drain, even if they have a 7 time WDC in the stable as someone else that is winning, would attract them.
ringo wrote: ↑24 Jan 2023, 17:34
Already the AMG One success is mostly to do with Hamilton. A lot of mercedes sports cars sales and desirability was driven by Hamilton's success in F-1. Even in the Nico Rosberg and Shumacher days, the cars didn't have the same pull.
Hamilton has indirectly increased desirability of the mercedes cars as sports cars.
I am not sure how much you have followed the Project One. But here are a few nuggets.
The Project One got announced in 2016! But it was in the pipeline for about a year before.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/mercede ... een-light/
https://www.topspeed.com/cars/mercedes/ ... oject-one/
https://www.thedrive.com/news/39057/her ... g-to-build
n 2017, less than a year after the announcement and just before the Nürburgring 24 Hours, we had an early chance to take a look at the AMG Project One's chassis, including its 1.6-liter V6 turbo, complex exhaust, battery packs, electric motors and pushrod suspension. Check out what that early rolling chassis mockup looked like:
Second, the brain behind Project One was Tobias Moers.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/proj ... interview/
The idea itself was birthed back in October of 2015, just two years ago, a remarkably rapid turn-around for a car that looks set to reset performance benchmarks and redefine the term "racecar for the road." I sat down with Tobias Moers, chairman of the board of management for Mercedes-AMG, about how it all came together.
'Something special'
"We wanted to do something special for the 50th anniversary," Moers told me in a quiet spot away from bustling Mercedes-Benz booth at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. The nice thing about anniversaries is that you know they're coming well in advance. The bad thing, though, is that they tend to be pretty inflexible, so the team needed to have something ready to show this year, at this show, and that something had to be a hypercar.
They planned only 275 units of it and all of that was sold out, before they could produce it!
https://www.guideautoweb.com/en/article ... tion-form/
“The team at AMG and the [AMG] High Performance Powertrain Formula 1 arm came to us about four years ago and said ‘we’ve got a great idea, let’s put a Formula 1 engine into a road car’. I will have to go back to check the meeting minutes, but I’m sure we were drunk when we said yes,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius joked a short while ago, as quoted by British website Autocar.
Ascribing Project One's genesys or it's progress or success (?) to Lewis is a far stretched idea to build his commercial viability for Mercedes, which can influence a hefty pay packet. Mercedes is an established global name and their brand's success in F1 is enough to propel their sales and brand image. Lewis does add to it, but as a small part. Does that warrant the kind of rumored remuneration he is negotiating for? I don't think so, but other can have different opinions.