The ability to bring Formula E to urban centres (exemplified by Virgin’s Buenos Aires street run) is getting the attention of audiences who’ve rarely taken an interest in motorsport. Is DS Automobiles seeing a noticeable difference from their participation in this respect?
There’s been a lot of awareness. Certainly we’re doing our best from the Virgin element of the DS Virgin team to ensure that we get the message out there and we tend to be good at that. I think both our partners in DS Performance, the DS brand and Hewlett Packard are feeling the benefits of the association. I think an involvement with Formula E is a great branding message for any company. It demonstrates an organisation’s credentials in terms of wanting to look after people and planet.
The Virgin group is very interested in doing that and DS Virgin (and HP) are aligned with this. It gives us a platform for the CEO’s, executives and brand managers of all our partners expound these values – whether internally with their own customer and employee base or via online media.
The arrival of Jaguar next season must be a welcome prospect from a manufacturer perspective. Do you think manufacturers will step up when they see they can be competitive on the fraction of a Formula One budget?
First of all competition is good for anyone. The reason that Virgin Atlantic is good across the Atlantic is because British Airways and American Airlines are there. Competition will drive improvements amongst those competitors and will provide a better customer experience and a better technical solution, because if you want to compete and win you have to keep improving all the time. We welcome competition, it’s great. If we were winning everything all the time I’m sure there are people in my team that would like that, but I’m very much like there to be tight competition. That’s what makes the sport enthralling.
In terms of the budget cap I think it’s a wonderful thing. Every company must be conscious of the amount of money they spend on advertising or messaging. Certainly the budgets of Formula E are a fraction of other series – for example Formula One. It doesn’t mean I’m not a fan of Formula One, but it is restrictive to the brands that are able to enter it and the return on investment is certainly not as great as can be achieved in Formula E. So it’s a great business decision coming into Formula E and I think that’s why you’re finding many original equipment manufacturers of cars are doing so.
Do you think F1 might be looking at the success Formula E now and regret not implementing a cost cap in 2010?
I really think that Formula One should have a cost cap. I would really love Formula One to do well because I still believe that it’s the pinnacle of motor sport and I think it would be great if they were able to achieve that. But I think it’s going to be very difficult to convince the leading teams that are winning and spending a lot of money, to give up the certainty of their position via reducing the budget they spend on it.
I would very much like to see the technology of normally-aspirated cars (which can be around for some time yet) to be improved through allowing people to come in and operate a much lower cost limit than there is at the moment – which is unlimited.