For Infiniti, Sebastien Vettel's Dominance is a Mixed Blessing

You'd think that having a four-time F1 world champion would be a good thing.

Image via Wikipedia Commons / Photo by Morio

Infiniti is a sponsor of Red Bull Racing, and therefore gets to make all sorts of Sebastian Vettel related advertisements, special edition cars, and the like, and that's great. The problem is that Infiniti seems to think that Vettel is doing too well, by winning his fourth consecutive championship four races still left in the 2013 F1 season.

Why is this bad? Because it's turning viewers off, people started complaining en masse about how F1 has turned into a game of Vettel leading and everybody else fighting for second place for well over a year now, and a lot of fans are deciding to just stop watching now.

According to Andy Palmer, an Infiniti sales, marketing, and engineering executive,  “It’s a fact that we are in F1 to gain awareness of our brand, and that’s all about getting eyeballs on screens. From that point of view you could say Sebastian has been too successful. Wrapping up the championship with four races to run is maybe not good news for us from that perspective."

Of course, the Infiniti marketing people do recognize that this is probably not just a bad thing. “But we have to look at it from the long-term perspective. It’s clear that Sebastian is emerging as a legend of the sport – someone’s whose records will stand him as a giant of the sport in years to come. He’s achieving that success with us, and working with us as a brand ambassador."

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[via Autocar

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