Williams launch FW29 and confirm Lenovo deal

[davewilson]

As expected, the AT&T Williams Formula one team launched its new race car, the Williams-Toyota FW29, for the 2007 season Formula One World Championship at the team’s headquarters near Oxford today. In addition to unveiling the team’s new race car, livery and racing identity with its new title partner AT&T, the team also confirmed a major new sponsorship agreement with Lenovo, a global leader in the international PC market. This announcement consolidates a strong winter of sponsorship activity for the team.

 

Reflecting on all elements of the day’s announcements, Team Principal Frank Williams said,

 

“Without question, 2006 was not our finest year but I am delighted to see how the entire Williams workforce has pulled together and redoubled its efforts over the winter. It is how you perform in adversity that really counts. We begin this year with a completely new brand identity courtesy of our new partners AT&T, four new or upgraded sponsors including Lenovo, a wealth of new engineering talent and, of course, what we hope to be the focus of all these efforts and ambitions, the FW29.”

 

Commercially the team has enjoyed a successful winter, recruiting new title partner AT&T and increasing its sponsorship engagements with Philips and Randstad, who both now have on-car presence, an increased investment in response to a positive experience in their first season with the team. Today’s announcement that Lenovo has joined the team as a major partner consolidates a robust commercial outlook.

 

Headquartered in Purchase, New York, Lenovo is an international technology company formed as a result of the acquisition by the Lenovo Group of the IBM Personal Computing Division. With 19,000 employees worldwide and revenues of US$13 billion, Lenovo is a major global manufacturer of computing equipment for both the consumer and enterprise marketplace. The company will support the AT&T Williams team with a wide range of hardware to support a variety of operational activity.

 

With the advent of a new title partnership relationship, Williams today unveiled a new corporate identity, drawing on its thirty year heritage by returning to an iconic ‘W’ brand device, refreshed and re-interpreted for the team’s fourth decade of racing. The new corporate identity forms part of the new racing identity of AT&T Williams. This new identity will be universally unveiled trackside, but is reflected in the new racing livery of the FW29. Also newly launched today is the team website located at HTUwww.attwilliams.comUTH, with vastly improved and increased content, facilities and services for all user communities from consumers to the media and other stakeholders such as team partners.

 

With all of these disparate elements of progress over the winter, Williams’ Director of Engineering, Patrick Head, neatly summarised the team’s approach to

2007.

 

“Of course we start every project we undertake with the ambition of being the best, whether in engineering or marketing terms and indeed we approach every race with the sole ambition to win. But we are not in the business of predicting the year ahead as that requires me to speculate about the likely performance of our rivals. All I can say is that as an organisation we exist to race and everyone in the company has shown a singular sense of purpose over the winter and so we look forward to Melbourne with anticipation”.

 

The AT&T Williams team hits the track in Jerez on Tuesday February 6 with two FW29s to build upon the significant testing mileage undertaken on interim winter cars with four weeks of testing in Spain, prior to the season’s first race on Melbourne on March 18.


The Stig