Why sponsor hospitality is important is just one of the topics covered in this week’s edition of The Business of Being a Race Driver. I also have 5 sponsorship tips for new racers and much more!
The Business of Racing
Timeline of a Sponsor Hospitality Day at Brands Hatch
The Pro Sports Hub provides a timeline of a recent sponsor hospitality day at the Brands Hatch racetrack. “In total, 14 guests from three separate brands attended the event, all positioned in different areas around the circuit depending on their hospitality package.”
5 Tips For New Racers
In his post 5 Tips For New Racers, Jim Bowie offers some valuable tios for racers seeking out sponsorship. “PSA for new, young drivers…. and/or their parents. My LinkedIn feed runneth over with: “Give me YOUR $$$$$$ so I can go racing!” Stop it….”
Jim is an upcoming guest on the Motorsport Prospects Podcast. Subscribe now so you will receive notice of the episode automatically.
How Does Motorsport Sponsorship Work? A Complete Brand Guide (2026)
There is a version of motorsport sponsorship that everyone understands. A brand pays money. Their logo appears on the car. People watching the race see it. This is not wrong exactly. It is simply the smallest possible interpretation of a much larger and more structurally interesting commercial arrangement — and brands that stop at that interpretation consistently leave the majority of the value on the table.
RTR Sports Marketing explains how motorsport sponsorship works for brands.
The Sponsorship Model Is Dying. Most Teams Just Don’t Know It Yet. (And the ones who figure that out first are going to reshape motorsports entirely)
The reason most racing teams are one bad season away from extinction has nothing to do with how fast their car is. It has everything to do with how they’re funded. Will Marotti explains why in his post here.
General Motorsport Marketing Advice & Resources
Motorsport Sponsorship ROI: Complete Guide to Measuring, Proving and Maximising Your Return
Forrester Research’s 2024 analysis of US consumer marketing found that 76% of marketers who invested in sports sponsorship said they struggle to calculate ROI1. In the same research period, 39% of CMOs planned to increase their sponsorship spend in 2025 and 28% were making their first-ever motorsport partnership. The numbers are in tension with each other: brands are investing more money in a marketing category they openly admit they cannot measure. And that admission is costing them — not in the investment itself, but in the boardroom conversation that determines whether the investment continues.
A separate analysis found that between one-third and one-half of US companies have no system in place to measure sponsorship ROI at all. This is not a niche problem. It is the structural challenge that defines the category — and it is the challenge that determines, more than any other variable, whether a brand renews its motorsport investment on evidence or abandons it on assumption. SponsorPulse’s 2025 research found that brands with robust measurement frameworks report 35% higher ROI than those using traditional metrics alone. The measurement infrastructure is not a back-office function. It is where the investment is either justified or killed.
This guide from RTR Sports Marketing exists to solve that problem completely: to provide the definition, the metrics, the formula, the framework, the mistake list, and the CFO conversation that transform motorsport sponsorship from an act of institutional faith into a commercially defensible, precisely measured, continuously optimized investment.
Sponsorship renewal season has a funny way of sneaking up on you. The proposal lands in your inbox, someone from the property follows up with a friendly email, and suddenly you’re signing off on another year without ever asking whether you should.
It happens all the time. Not because marketers are careless, but because renewals feel routine. The relationship is established, the logistics are known, and saying yes is easier than reopening a conversation that already feels settled. This post from the Charge sponsorship agency explains the questions a sponsor needs to ask before the renew.
The Costs of Racing
How Much Does it Cost to Get to GT3?
Antoine Bruneel looks at a recent translated Chinese infographic from a Chinese motorsport group on the costs of going from newbie to GT3. “It is not 100% accurate every market, championship and driver path is different but it gives a useful indication for people who are not familiar with motorsport. It shows the kind of investment required to move from karting, to entry-level track events, to cup cars, GT4 and eventually GT3.”
Realistic Timeline and Costs From Karts to F1
In. series of posts on LinkedIn, Dan Wells from Drivers Lab offers a number of observations with accompanying advice to parents and young drivers based on his extensive experience. The first post talks about the three things more important than qualifying fastest. The second post talks about the honest karting-to-F1 timeline with the associated costs. The final post talks about how Drivers Lab and its associated companies are linked. Highly recommended you have a look at them.