{"id":1981,"date":"2010-02-01T06:20:54","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T11:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=1981"},"modified":"2010-02-01T06:20:54","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T11:20:54","slug":"petrov-wants-sponsors-to-help-pay-renault-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/petrov-wants-sponsors-to-help-pay-renault-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Petrov wants sponsors to help pay Renault bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
Vitaly Petrov on Sunday confirmed that he is paying to make his F1 debut with Renault this year.<\/span><\/h5>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the 2009 GP2 championship runner-up denied reports the deal is funded by Russian multinationals to the tune of multiple hundreds of millions of rubles.<\/p>\n

On the 25-year-old’s helmet visor this year, the word ‘Russia’ is prominent.<\/p>\n

“My father has given me the money to be here.\u00a0 It’s just him, my manager and my father’s friends.\u00a0 No one else,” Petrov said at the Valencia circuit.<\/p>\n

He is hoping his confirmation as F1’s first ever Russian race driver will stir the corporate interest of the huge country.<\/p>\n

The BBC said his deal is for one year initially but with options for 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n

“The people in Russia, they must wake up to what has happened here because we are in F1 without any sponsorship and any help,” said Petrov.<\/p>\n

“Now people will see us in formula one and hopefully it will change things.”<\/p>\n

He also hopes his presence on the grid this year will be a step towards the inauguration of a Russian grand prix.<\/p>\n

“This is what I’ve been trying to do,” he explained.\u00a0 “I’ve been telling people ‘We are Russia, a big country, and we must have a grand prix’.<\/p>\n

“So now I am here, maybe people will try to do something,” he added.<\/p>\n

Team boss Eric Boullier admitted Petrov is contributing some 7 per cent of Renault’s entire F1 budget for 2010, but insists the first priority was to sign a driver with talent.<\/p>\n

“We actually had (talks with) drivers who could have brought twice the amount Vitaly is bringing with him,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vitaly Petrov on Sunday confirmed that he is paying to make his F1 debut with Renault this year. \u00a0 But the 2009 GP2 championship runner-up denied reports the deal is funded by Russian multinationals to the tune of multiple hundreds of millions of rubles. On the 25-year-old’s helmet visor this year, the word ‘Russia’ is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,5262,55,564,415],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1982,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions\/1982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}