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The ongoing difficulties faced by independent Formula 1 teams in generating income and attracting sponsors have been demonstrated by a number of developments in recent weeks.

In the most high profile of these, Williams title sponsor Martini have decided to pull out of F1 after the end of the season, ending a five-year partnership.

Williams maintain they are “financially stable”, and the impact of Martini’s withdrawal is not necessarily as large as it appears. The deal was relatively small for a title sponsorship package – starting at a reputed £14m in 2014 but reducing to around £11m this year.

Williams’ budget is around £120m a year and their coffers are boosted this season by having two drivers paying substantial budgets for their drives.

Canadian Lance Stroll is into the second year of a three-year contract, which is said to be worth in the region of £14m to the team. And Sergey Sirotkin is believed to be paying at least that for his debut season.

Williams accepted a lower than usual amount from Martini for a number of reasons, chief among them that they liked the look and feel of the association, and that the branding on the car, while apparently large, also left key areas open for other partners.

This is a view echoed at Mclaren, who do not want to dilute their own brand with a ‘title sponsor’ per se, but are very keen to attract big sponsors. New deals with Brazilian fuel company Petrobras and computer giant Dell still leave large swathes of bare orange for bigger-paying partners. Non-paying companies are in prominent positions, such as Fernando Alonso’s Kimoa clothing brand on the barge boards.

Mclaren executive director Zak Brown admitted that the team’s competitive struggles with Honda for the past three years “doesn’t make selling to partners any easier” but insisted that “everything commercially is going really well”.

All teams are finding new backers harder to come by than in the past and that any deals are for less money than previously. This is part of their concern at the five per cent drop in the value of team payments from the F1 Group in 2017, the first year with new owner Liberty Media at the helm.

Liberty are trying to introduce a budget cap, in the region of £150m a year. But some senior figures believe Liberty’s policy is to impose this so it can get away with giving the teams less money in the new contracts that have to be negotiated for after 2020.

But while there is a desire among the teams to reduce costs, there is no strong will for it, and certainly not for a cost cap.

Declining sponsorship revenues, coupled with reducing payments, and F1’s owners pushing for an unpopular form of cost control is likely to make commercial discussions long and tough this year.

THE DEAL WAS RELATIVELY SMALL FOR A TITLE SPONSORSHIP PACKAGE, STARTING AT A REPUTED £14M