When Pepperstone Group Chief Executive Officer Tamas Szabo first saw his company’s logo on the side of an Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team car, he was proud.
He was also, by his own admission, thinking about it entirely the wrong way.
Szabo joined Pepperstone in 2017 and later acquired the Australian-headquartered trading platform, building it into one of the fastest-growing retail brokers in the world and he is not someone who makes commercial decisions lightly.
But when Pepperstone joined Formula 1 by signing with Aston Martin in January 2025, his frame of reference for what a partnership actually delivered was limited to what most people see from the outside.
Eighteen months on, the numbers tell their own story – since the partnership began, Pepperstone has recorded a 76 percent increase in trading volume.
Szabo is careful not to attribute all of that to F1, but he is equally clear that the partnership has been transformative in ways that go well beyond what any logo placement could explain.
“To the uninitiated – and I’d have certainly put myself in that camp – it is about the logo,” he explained.
“But today I think that’s probably 20 to 30 percent of the value. The rest is all about the activation.”
That hypothetical split represents a fundamental shift in how sophisticated commercial brands are now evaluating F1 partnerships, and what they expect from them.
For Pepperstone, the activation layer operates across several dimensions simultaneously and eing partnered with an F1 team, Szabo argues, changes how a business sees itself.
“We’re not tolerant of mediocrity, and it is easier to understand what that means when you have a partnership like this. It levels up the business.
“With your logo on the side of an F1 car, there’s a natural assumption that you are large and serious. It doesn’t change the reality of who we are – we were always a large and serious company – but it communicates it better.”
Another dimenstion that is not discussed as often but is potentially the most valuable is the partner ecosystem itself.
Partnering with Aston Martin Aramco is a bigger, deeper proposition than you necessarily realise up front. Without exaggeration, I’d say it’s transformative.
Tamas Szabo
Szabo describes meetings with fellow Aston Martin partners including Glenfiddich, Breitling and others as commercially significant in their own right.
“It’s also useful to meet other team partners and do events with them,” he told Aston Martin’s official website.
“I’ve met a lot of CEOs. It’s fantastic to speak with like-minded people, but also to learn about how they’ve grown their business
“Partnering with Aston Martin Aramco is a bigger, deeper proposition than you necessarily realise up front. Without exaggeration, I’d say it’s transformative.”
For teams and commercial directors trying to make the case for partnership value in an increasingly metrics-driven market, that may be the most important conclusion being drawn in the paddock right now.
