Ferrari spoiled its car’s livery to accommodate their title sponsorship deal with technology brand Hewlett-Packard, according to the marketing boss of a new rival’s sponsor.

Antoine Le Nel, the chief marketing officer of Audi’s sponsor Revolut, said he wanted to put his company’s logos on a car which suited them. “How can you put blue on a red car?” he asked when speaking to Business of Sport.

He said Audi’s identity and complementary branding made it an obvious fit for them. “Audi became the favourite choice very quickly,” he explained. “The alignment happened super-quickly.

“First, from a brand perspective, if you look at the Audi brand, it’s premium, but relatable. Ferrari is very premium, Aston Martin is very premium, McLaren is very premium and so on, but can you actually relate to Ferrari? It’s very different. Audi, you can really access it – it’s an accessible luxury in many ways.”

“The brand identity is very important,” he added. “[At] Revolut we are very committed to design, we’re very committed to the user experience and so on, and it needs to fit with it.

“No offence, but I think what HP and Ferrari have done to their cars is not good from a design perspective. How can you put blue on a red car? This is not good.

“While I’d say big kudos to Mastercard and McLaren, I think that is a great branding thing. [Google] Chrome as well, I think what they’ve done with the wheel and so on, so I think there are brands that are doing a really good job and that works really well.

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“Then, when I look at the Audi and Revolut brand identity, it felt very natural. So that’s the first element.”

McLaren integrates its sponsors well, says Le Nel

Audi is entering F1 this year having purchased the Sauber team. It has developed its own power units as well as designing the chassis.

Le Nel said the scale of the challenge Audi is taking on also appealed to Revolut. He contrasted them to fellow newcomers Cadillac, who have taken on the challenge of building their own chassis, but will source a power unit and other parts from Ferrari.

“The narrative is super-important,” he said. “We at Revolut are here to disrupt banking and to win against incumbents. And Audi is this.

“Audi is amazing from that perspective because they are entering a sport that is arguably the hardest sport on the planet at the moment. They come from zero and they are building their car themselves. It’s not like Cadillac [that] is buying the whole car and so on, Audi is building everything. The whole chassis, the whole engine, the gearbox, the power unit, everything is made by themselves.

“Exactly like Revolut. We build everything ourselves: we go from the ground and we build up and that’s exactly what Audi is doing.”

Audi presented a design concept indicating how its car’s livery may look

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