Formula One teams need money to develop and race their machines and companies provide this money in the form of millions of dollars of sponsorship.
Formula 1 is a global sport that in recent history has generated over $4 billion per year. Some of the top teams today have an annual budget in excess of $400 million and most of it is acquired through the use of sponsorships. F1 is the world most widely watched annual sport with almost 600 million viewers per year. With the expansion into recently uncharted territories like the Middle East, Turkey, China and other countries like Russia and India also on the cards, the number of viewers and the possibilities of different and new sponsorships keep on rising.
With these astonishing amounts of money and viewers available to companies to promote their products, it is not surprising that sponsorship in Formula 1 is a multi billion dollar market, and teams vie for the best and biggest companies to put their names on their cars and their money in their pockets.
It is rather surprising then that even though the modern day Formula 1 series started in 1950, it took until 1968 for the first company sponsorship to make its appearance in the form of Imperial Tobacco’s Gold Leaf Brand on the Lotus Formula One team.
Before Formula 1 teams started using paid sponsorship in Formula 1, the team raced in their respective national colors that they had used for years. Now teams change the colors of their team according to the main or title sponsor. Ferrari has over the years used a shade of red known as rosso corsa (“race red”), the national racing color of Italy. However the red used by Ferrari does vary in shade in part due to the major sponsorship by Marlboro. Since 1996 Ferrari has raced in what is generally known as “Marlboro Red”.
BMW used to be an engine supplier in the 1980 and then in 2000 again. However since 2006 they have had a works team of its own and as such the main colors and sponsorship on the car is the white and light blue, dark blue and some red. The white is the original racing color of Germany, whilst the white and blue are the colors of Bavaria where of course BMW has its origins.
Honda has the last two years shown a new side to sponsorship – after losing their main sponsor of BAT – which had the Lucky Strike logo, they had to revert to a new idea in the form of an environmental awareness program called Earth Dreams. The only logos on the car were the Honda logo of the team, Bridgestone and a picture of the Earth.
The longest running sponsorship so far in F1 was the partnership of McLaren and Marlboro which lasted for 23 years from 1974 to 1996.
The Williams team on the other hand, being a major constructor has over the years changed their colors and sponsorships on a regular basis, but has kept them competitive and financed since 1978 and as such has change their colors numerous times, from white, to yellow and white, blue and yellow, yellow and white, blue, red…
In 2007 sponsorship in Formula 1 took a new step, the internet. On April 6, for the first time in the history of the sport sponsorships was offered at an online auction for the Spyker F1 team.
Sponsorship will always continue in Formula 1 in one form or another, even with the future idea of a limitation on the budgets of the teams. It has never been more true, money does make the world go round.
