Race drivers are funny people.
The week out help from sponsors and teams and patrons and anyone else that helps them land a ride in their chosen team.
The thing that is sometimes forgotten is how the money flows in the sport.
You and me and anyone you know or don’t know, goes out in the world, usually earning a living, and spend some, all or more than all of that living on creating a life for yourself.
And as keen Motorsport followers, we choose to follow drivers, and teams and brands, and car makes and pretty much anything we choose. It may or may not change our purchasing decisions too. That’s the sponsors’ intentions anyway.
And some drivers understand that they have supporters, some more keen/intense than others. And that they are going to have opinions about whether someone is running good, or their car brand is running good, or if the team is running good.
This kind of stuff ends up in the media too, the newspapers, the teev, radio, and Facebook/instagram/twitter and the like. Which is used to help quantify the success of a sponsor’s investment as much as anything else.
So the following quote from
Here is interesting...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by The Article, Attributed To Fabian Coulthard
“People who sit behind their keyboards don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of racing; social media has probably given people a voice when they shouldn’t have a voice and we are the ones that cop it.”
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It makes you wonder if he truly knows how the industry works, or what the point of marketing communications actually are.
Apparently the very people who buy the products from companies that pay for the driver to live his dream, “...shouldn’t have a voice...”. That is you and me Mr Coulthard seems to be talking about here.
Yet the very same voice we seemingly are not allowed to have, is called upon when they are successful or winning, or when their sponsor is looking to promote their products with a view to encouraging switching between brands.
An elegant solution may have been to allow Mr Coulthard’s driving do the talking, but clearly a group of fans talking about a legitimate comparison to a more successful teammate isn’t allowed..
Weird
