APRIL 30, 2012

Sauber gets the Blues!

Sauber has entered into a partnership with British premier league football club, Chelsea.

Sauber has entered into a partnership with British premier league football club, Chelsea.

In the Chinese and Bahrain GPs, the Sauber C31s ran with the inscriptions "Out of the Blue" and "True Blue" on the engine cover and will sport the full blue Chelsea FC logo for the first time as the Spanish Grand Prix kicks of the European season on March 13.

Monisha Kaltenborn, Sauber's CEO said: "A partnership like this between Formula One and football has never existed before in this form, yet there are numerous commonalities and possible synergies.

"The Sauber F1 Team and Chelsea FC are dealing with many of the same sporting and commercial topics and we want to strengthen each other in these areas. We are looking forward to exploiting these opportunities, and we congratulate Chelsea on making it to the final of the Champions League."

Those with a mischievous sense of humour might question the synergy between the famously straight and correct Swiss and Chelsea skipper John Terry, kneeing an opponent in the back and getting himself sent off in Chelsea's crucial Champions League semi-final second leg against Barcelona last week!

Chelsea somehow managed to prevail, however, and Terry went some way to redeeming himself with an apology to his club mates and then a goal in a 6-1 thrashing of Queens Park Rangers in the British Premier League over the weekend. That will not, however, have gone down well with a certain Tony Fernandes, the Caterham boss who is also the owner of QPR, who now languish perilously close to relegation from the Premier League.

Sauber says that the new partnership is focused on synergies and ways to enhance performance in business and sporting matters. These will include the sale of merchandising and exchange of knowledge in the area of sport science. Both partners will support each other by featuring the other partner's logo and thus benefit from a significant market presence outside their original sport.