FEBRUARY 2, 2007

Williams confirms Lenovo

Williams F1 has pulled off a major coup by signing up Lenovo as a major new sponsor. Lenovo is the third largest personal computer company in the world but is little known as the brand was only a minor player before it acquired the PC businesses of IBM in May 2005.

"Formula 1 provides an exciting platform to build Lenovo awareness in key markets worldwide, and to showcase our products and their reliability," says the company's chief marketing officer Deepak Advani. "This is in an environment where cutting-edge technology is essential. Lenovo creates the best-engineered PCs in the world, and we look forward to collaborating with the AT&T Williams engineering team in the highly competitive world of Formula 1."

Lenovo is a big player with more than 19,000 employees worldwide and around $13bn in annual revenue.

All the more impressive is the fact that while Lenovo has a lot of signage on the cars, the team has sold its title sponsorship to AT&T.