Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Aston Martin deal 'not completely done' - Force India

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Force India's chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer says a potential deal with Aston Martin is not completely dead.

Aston Martin showed an interest in Force India last season, with the potential major sponsorship deal involving a rebranding of the team. However, Aston Martin opted to delay a decision until January and has since cooled its interest in F1 amid uncertainty regarding the 2017 regulations.

While Szafnauer said early in January that no deal would happen this year, he told F1i the door is not closed on the idea being revisited.

“No it’s not done, never say never," Szafnauer said when asked about the Aston Martin deal. "We’ll continue to talk to them. They’re friendly with us and you don’t know what the future brings so it’s not completely done.”

And Szafnauer says Force India has been able to increase its budget off the back of its fifth-place finish in the constructors' championship last year despite the Aston Martin deal not coming to fruition.

“Well there was some good news recently where we’ve done a five-year deal with Smirnoff. That along with the increased performance of last year finishing fifth underpinned the team financially.

"And we’ve added more sponsors - we’ve added a Mexican bank for example - and some of the other sponsors we’ve had we’ve increased their sponsorship with the team, we’ve increased the level at which they sponsor us. So all that together bodes well for that discretionary spend.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.