Auto News

Williams to develop Jaguar links

Former champions Williams hope to build a long-term partnership outside of Formula One with Indian-owned sportscar maker Jaguar, team chairman Adam Parr said on Tuesday.

Williams, struggling on the race track with their worst start to a season, announced a partnership last week with Tata Motors´ Jaguar to develop a limited edition hybrid 320kph supercar costing in excess of $1 million.

“The Jaguar announcement I think is very fundamental to understanding our business going forwards,” said Parr, who added the deal would be “earnings positive” in 2011.

“Our plan is to develop a very strong relationship with Jaguar Land Rover outside of Formula One, to have a long term partnership based around high performance road cars,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“Although we are an independent team, our greatest years have been ones in partnership with a car maker,” continued the Briton after Williams Grand Prix Holdings announced what he termed “solid, decent” results for 2010.

“This Jaguar relationship is outside Formula One but…it brings stature, it will bring additional revenues to the company and also it´s an enormous vote of confidence in our business and indeed in our team.

“That will help us attract better people and to perform on the track as well as off,” he said.

Williams´s results, the last before an initial public offering and listing in Frankfurt in March, showed a 33 percent increase in pre-tax profits on a like for like basis from 4.5 million pounds ($7.37 million) to 7.7 million. Turnover was down from 108.3 million pounds to 91 million.

Sourse: http://sports.dailymirror.lk/2011/05/14/williams-to-develop-jaguar-links/

Posted on Sunday, May 15, 2011 @ 02:19:27 LKT

>> Back to News