Newly signed title sponsors PKN Orlen will run a karting academy together with Alfa Romeo, in a bid to find a new Polish star to succeed Robert Kubica.
Following on from Wednesday’s news that Polish petroleum giant PKN Orlen have signed up as co-title sponsors of Alfa Romeo Racing for 2020 as part of a package that brings Robert Kubica to the team as a reserve driver, the company have announced a burgeoning programme to help find a new Polish superstar.
Kubica remains very much at the forefront of Polish representation in global sport but he is far closer to the end of his top-level racing career than the start of it. As a result, Orlen say they are going to be helping to root out some promising new young Polish talent through a karting programme run in association with Alfa Romeo.
Three Polish drivers will be selected to join the Orlen Karting Academy, run by Sauber Motorsport. Sauber remain the company operating the team Alfa Romeo Racing in Formula 1. Orlen went into sponsorship of karting programmes at a national level in Poland in 2017, but are stepping this commitment up with the intention of ‘selecting and training the successors’ of Robert Kubica as the leading light in Polish motorsport.
At a national level, some 200 drivers will take part in Orlen-backed championships, which includes the initial 30 young drivers nominated for the Orlen Team Academy.
Orlen have supplied some insight into why visibility of a Polish driver is so important in their home market. According to their own figures, Robert Kubica’s participation in the 2019 Formula 1 World Championship as a race driver with Williams resulted in a 630% increase of F1 viewership.
According to their own figures, the brand exposure offered to them through TV broadcasts as a result of their backing Robert Kubica was some 26 million euro. PKN Orlen say this translated to a huge increase in retail sales for them, with an operating profit for the first three quarters of 2019 increased by around 141.2 million euro compared to the same time period in 2018.
