When the Mercedes he decided to return to Formula 1 as a constructor, buying the BrawnGP, he did so by joining Petronas, the Malaysian state oil company, with which he has established a relationship that has now been going on for twelve seasons. However, the Southeast Asian company suffered not a little financially during the period of the pandemic, posting multimillion-dollar losses due to falling oil prices and demand. In this scenario, Petronas has already made official thegoodbye to his activity in MotoGP, leaving the SRT team – which risked closure – and would seem willing to do the same with Mercedes in F1, as leaked by the rumors of Saturday evening.
A colossus of the scope of Mercedes obviously already has its alternative ready, which responds to the name of Aramco, the Saudi hydrocarbon company, which has already made itself known in the premier category of motoring by becoming a global partner of F1 from March 2020. According to what was reported by Decalspotters, a site specializing in sponsorships in motorsport, the negotiation between Mercedes and Aramco was close to materializing even some time ago: “It is not the first time that the two entities have talked about an agreement. In the past, in fact, Aramco was in discussions with Mercedes, before joining as a sponsor to F1. Despite the successes on the track, the Petronas top management were not happy with the team’s treatment of its main partner. Having learned – at the time – of the Mercedes-Aramco deal, Petronas in turn began to negotiate with Formula 1, as a global sponsor. But in the end Mercedes renewed with Petronas, and Saudi Aramco signed with F1 ″.
The agreement between Aramco and Formula 1 is multi-year and is quantified at over 450 million dollars and includes the sponsorship under one’s own name of three races on the calendar, in addition to the E-Sports linked to the highest car category.