APRIL 28, 2002

Renault and Bertelsmann

The Renault F1 team has done a deal with the vast Bertelsmann empire to plug the German media company's BMG and Lycos Europe brands.

THE Renault F1 team has done a deal with the vast Bertelsmann empire to plug the German media company's BMG and Lycos Europe brands. The cross-marketing deal will include BMG singers turning up at races in order to get a bit more publicity. The team said that the new deal is "a perfect match" for the BMG music company thanks to its "complementary blend of dynamic, multi-cultural and lifestyle-oriented values".

The partnership was due to kick off on Sunday with the arrival in the paddock of BMG's Mexican "asset" Patricia Manterola. The 30-year-old from Mexico City started out as a model before diversifying into soap opera and music with a group called Garibaldi. She has since begun a solo career. She is also the leading figure of the Andrea shoe brand in Mexico and represents the Mervyn's department store of Los Angeles. She went to Hollywood in 1998 and has since enjoyed success in the television show "Angeles", the Hispanic version of Charlie's Angels.

More recently she posed naked, painted like a tiger, as part of a campaign to fight against the mistreatment to animals in circuses. She then had a big success playing a lesbian in an HBO TV series and has since been given the job of promoting Miller Beer in Latin America.

The presence of this "sensational" star can only help F1 to become more popular in Mexico.