Sauber and Lotus executives to discuss F1’s future at Thursday’s Black Book Race Forum

The future of Formula One and the wider motorsport world will be on the agenda in London this week at the first Black Book Race Forum.

The future of Formula One and the wider motorsport world will be on the agenda in London this week at the first Black Book Race Forum.

Senior figures from across the industry will gather at the Artillery Gardens in the City of London on Thursday 3rd July for the event, which will feature panels focusing on teams and governance, circuits, and sponsorship.

The event, which comes just three days before the British Grand Prix, has been designed as a complement to the Black Book, an annual sister publication to SportsPro which focuses on the business of Formula One. The ninth edition, featuring team-by-team and circuit-by-circuit analysis, was published in April.

Panellists at Thursday’s Race Forum, which is part of the wider Race Week London event, include two senior executives from the Lotus F1 Team: deputy team principal Federico Gastaldi and chief marketing officer Christian Vine.

Gastaldi will be part of the first panel of the day on teams and governance, alongside former FOTA general secretary Oliver Weingarten, former Jordan and Cosworth executive Mark Gallagher, and Mark Alexander, the head of consultancy firm Meet the Crowd’s business unit.

Later in the morning, in the middle of its busiest week of the year, the chief executive of the Motorsport Industry Association, Chris Aylett, will sit down for an in-depth interview on the health of British motorsport.

Other highlights include appearances by the chief executives of two of the new breed of government-funded Grands Prix, Razlan Razali from Malaysia’s Sepang International Circuit and Shaikh Salman Bin Isa Al-Khalifa from Bahrain International Circuit. They will be joined on the circuits and venues panel by Gonzalo Gobert, the general manager of Circuit de Valencia, a regular Formula One testing venue and host of the final round of the MotoGP world championship each year.

The afternoon sessions will be dominated by sponsorship. Lotus’ Vine will join Sauber’s sponsorship and acquisitions chief Heike Grunwald to give the teams’ perspective on the state of the sponsorship market and the challenges and opportunities for brands investing in Formula One. Repucom’s senior vice president of motorsport Nigel Geach will join them while Jonathan Martin, the chief marketing officer of EMC, a technical partner of the Lotus team, will offer a case study of how to make a mark in a cluttered paddock.

There is still time to secure your place at the inaugural Black Book Race Forum. Delegate passes are available by contacting Peter Jones via pjones@blackbook.biz or +44 (0)207 549 3250.

You can listen to SportsPro editor-in-chief and Black Book editor David Cushnan’s preview of the Race Forum here.

Share