• Sauber

Pedro de la Rosa gets Santander backing

ESPNF1 Staff
January 21, 2010 « Massa to test 2008 Ferrari on Friday | »
Pedro de la Rosa will drive at Sauber next year © Sutton Images
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Pedro de la Rosa will be personally sponsored by Spanish bank Santander in 2010.

He recently secured a drive at Sauber that will see him compete in his first full season in F1 since 2002. It is thought that the money was a contributing factor to de la Rosa getting the position, but Santander's communication boss insisted the bank, which already has deals with McLaren and Ferrari, was sponsoring the driver not the team.

"Pedro is a friend and a very intelligent person who impressed us very much in our three years together [at McLaren]," Juan Manuel Cendoya of Santander explained. "We are going to support him personally, but we are not going to be at Sauber with any of our brands."

It is understood the sponsorship will take the form of Santander's subsidiary Universia, a network of Spanish and Portuguese speaking universities. Cendoya also revealed that his company wanted to back Bruno Senna but was already fully subscribed in F1.

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