When good TV time goes bad

Formula One sponsors love it when the team they are backing wins, but unfortunately at every race there can only be one winner. Although some sponsor gurus claim that there is no such thing as bad publicity, there are occasions when sponsors would prefer that their logos were on another driver’s car that day. It can be, perhaps, because a driver or team has been disqualified for breaking the rules or because a driver the sponsor is backing has been involved in a controversial incident. You can imagine how sponsors would want to run for cover when a driver wearing their company’s logo gets involved in a fist-fight with another driver – especially if the fight is caught by the television cameras and broadcast all around the world. Sponsors can sometimes find that they get bad publicity if a driver does something bad on the track and makes himself a lot of enemies – both amongst the other drivers and the fans who follow the sport.