Strength and Numbers

In this, the second part of our review of the commercial line-up in Formula 1 2024, we review the last five teams to launch the new challengers.  They also happen to be the sport’s leading teams.  The bottom five in the 2023 World Championships sport just over 100 commercial partners between them this season, while the top five can boast 178.

Never is the saying ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ more relevant than when discussing sponsorship, so it comes as little surprise to find F1’s leading teams sporting an embarrassment of riches.

One or Lawrence Stroll’s first objectives when he bought and then rebranded the Aston Martin F1 team was to build a strong commercial department.  They achieved early success and have built on that, lining up 28 partners for the new season headed by title sponsor Aramco, the Saudi Arabian energy giant.

Cognizant has stepped back from being part of the team’s name, but remains an important partner.  Boss continues its involvement, the fashion brand also supporting the Visa Cash App RB team. Racing fans will no doubt spot Valvoline, the automotive and industrial lubricants company which has been a long time motorsport sponsor and launched its partnership with Aston Martin with a special car livery at last year’s British Grand Prix.

As with its major rivals, Aston Martin features a number of information technology partners, Cognizant lining up alongside cyber security giant Sentinel One, IT networks company Juniper Networks and cloud based solutions provider NetApp.

Aston Martin’s launch of the AMR24 F1 car also saw the car manufacturer reveal its all-important new Aston Martin Vantage road car as well as its GT3 racer.  Taking a leaf out of Ferrari’s book, Stroll wants to see the F1 programme directly benefit and influence the health of the car company, so it was an elegant solution to see the racing and road car programme so closely aligned.

Rivals Ferrari have seldom struggled for sponsorship, the legendary Italian brand attracting 37 partners for the new season.  The only team other than Red Bull Racing to have won a Grand Prix in 2023, Ferrari continues to benefit from  a very long term partnership with Shell, while Spanish banking giant Santander and the Australian on-line casino group VGW Play also feature prominently.

Italian beer company Peroni has switched to Ferrari from Aston Martin, while among the team’s list of upscale, prestige partners are companies including luxury Italian yacht manufacturer Riva, global private aviation giant VistaJet and iconic fashion label Giorgio Armani.

One ever-present partner at Ferrari remains Philip Morris International.  It’s Marlboro brand was a feature of Formula 1 for nearly 40 years, but fortunately the rather opaque Mission Winnow project which PMI used to partner Ferrari has been quietly parked.  Using F1 as a broader corporate activity makes rather more sense.

Malaysian energy giant Petronas continues one of Formula 1’s most successful and longest standing sponsorships at Mercedes, the company having been present in the sport since 1995, four years before the inaugural Malaysia Grand Prix.  Initially partnered with Sauber and then BMW, Petronas joined Mercedes in 2010 and has enjoyed phenomenal success ever since.

The Mercedes F1 team may have endured a fallow couple of seasons on track, but its 25 partners are high quality and many committed in the long term.  Sir Jim Ratcliffe, owner of one third of the team, has his Ineos chemicals company line up as a Principal Partner, and it’s joined by 18 team partners and 5 team suppliers.

Among the team partners are familiar names UBS bank and IWC watches, while SAP’s return to the sport with the team will trigger memories of the German software giant’s longstanding partnership at McLaren.  New partner WhatsApp is making its presence felt in some unique ways already, the radio communications button on the steering wheel used by Lewis Hamilton and George Russell featuring the company’s logo.

If world championship titles were won by the team with the most sponsors, and indeed one which sports not only quantity but quality, McLaren would be filling their trophy cabinet with more silverware.  With 51 partners Zak Brown’s team has flourished during Formula 1’s growth spurt.

The way in which senior executives Matt Pennington, Nick Martin and Louise McEwan are positioned in the management structure demonstrates the degree to which McLaren values having a strong commercial as well as technical leadership team.

Some teams could learn from that.

Leading the partner charge are cryptocurrency exchange OKX alongside Google’s Android and Chrome brands.  All three feature in the current series of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, Zak Brown holding a review meeting with OKX’s Haider Rafique, Google’s Nick Drake and Android’s Sameer Samet after the team’s tricky start to the 2023 season.

Tobacco sponsorship may be a thing of the past but British American Tobacco continues its partnership with McLaren in order to promote its Vusa vape and Velo nicotine pouches.  Among the array of notable partners are US technology giant Cisco, logistics company DP World which used to be a partner of Renault/Alpine and companies such as Coca Cola, Unilever, Goldman Sachs, Dell, Deloitte and VM Ware.

Commercially speaking, McLaren’s networking parties must surely be the best.

Red Bull Racing’s title sponsor is US technical giant Oracle, and the fact that Oracle Red Bull Racing has rather dominated Formula 1 of late has ensured strong brand visibility and a handsome return for Larry Ellison, the company’s founder, Chief Technology Office and Chairman.

The Milton Keynes based team has a total of 37 partners, including parent company Red Bull, with prominent brand on the cars for cryptocurrency exchange Bybit and energy company Exxon Mobil.  Other notables including long standing Formula 1 partner Tag Heuer, Visa whose interest in more prominent branding led to the deal with sister team Racing Bulls and Heineken 0.0, the hugely successful non-alcoholic beer launched by F1’s official partner Heineken back in 2017.

- Mark Gallagher