The Dark Underworld of F1 Sponsorships

- Like everyone, I was looking forward to the 2020 Formula 1 season, but since it was postponed for some reason, I started watching old races and it hit me. Many of the companies that sponsored these cars no longer exist. Shady money has been part of Formula 1's DNA for a long time and with 490 million viewers there is no doubt why shady companies want their names on the side of a racing car. What do these companies do? Do they even exist? Where do they get their money from? In this episode we'll look at some of the vaguest, literally incomprehensible companies that have an interest in Formula 1 racing, and don't worry, there's a Nigerian prince among them.

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Go see it. The races are very expensive. Formula 1 teams need hundreds or billions of dollars to compete each season. The amount of funding a team can contribute is related to what it can earn. This is how F1 works. Actually, that's how most sports work. more money, better engines, better drivers, Papa John's Jeff Baseball. Governing body of F1. the FIA ​​or "Federation Internationale d'Automotive". regulates technology in cars very strictly. Keep the playing field as level as possible on the race track. but historically they have not done much to balance monetary risks. For example, smaller teams in the United States do not get as big of a budget as larger teams in the United States.

Like the Yankees compared to the Orioles or the Lakers compared to the Kings. Formula 1 will have a budget cap for the first time from 2021. But historically there has always been a large gap in budgets between the teams that earn the most and those that earn the least. For example, Mercedes PETRONAS spent the most in 2019 at $484 million. Which is almost triple what the Williams team spent in the same time period. This was less than last year's budget of $150 million because Williams lost its main sponsor, Martini and Rossi, a vermouth company. a sweet liquor made from wine. Little side note: their products are pretty cheap.

I thought a company sponsoring an F1 team would actually have more luxurious products. But it costs $8.50 a bottle. Well, Williams still has to compete with Mercedes despite having to work with $350 million less than Mercedes. Therefore, it is logical that when a sponsor stops, things can get difficult for a team or even doom it. As a result, F1 teams sometimes end up with a less reputable sponsor. One example that F1 fans will remember is the Rich Energy fiasco from last year. The only F1 team with an American owner at the moment is Haas and it has been the victim of the shadiest sponsorship deal of 2019.

Rich Energy, a fancy new energy drink with antlers as a logo, became the title sponsor of the Haas team. It turned out that another F1 team, Force India, expelled Team Rich Energy because they had little input. Before getting involved with the money of Canadian millionaire Lawrence Stroll. Williams was about to sign a deal with Rich Energy but didn't show up. RIch Energy CEO William Storey and Imagine Dragons goalkeeper is suspected of making the appointment with Williams but never attending. After a few days the news comes out that he has signed with Haas and that should have set off the alarm at Haas, but in reality there is a third alarm: there was no product.

At some point during the 2019 season, people on the F1 forums and Reddit realized that they had never seen a can of Rich Energy in real life. When asked about the legitimacy of his company, Storey confused everyone when he told motorsport.com that when people say Rich Energy doesn't exist. which is the same as quoting: "Human beings have never walked on the moon" or that "Elvis is still alive." Man, there are easier ways to tell people that you have a product and that your company is real. Well, there are. Someone then obtained financial documents from the company that showed its bank account had £581 in it or a total of $770.

Perhaps the strangest part of this story occurs on July 10, 2019 when Storey goes crazy and posts the following message on Twitter: "Today, Rich Energy terminates our contract with Haas F1..." "...due to poor performance ". I guess they can't fire you if you quit. This was new not only for Haas but for everyone at Rich Energy. They tried to oust Storey from the company and called his actions the result of a quote: "Rogue individual," it was a big problem. Rich Energy never kept their end of the deal. Probably because they had $700 in their bank and Haas was screwed, that is, because they had to finish the season with one less sponsor.

Rich Energy is being sued over their antler logo when they were forced to pay $30,000 to Whyte bikes they never paid. William Storey was eventually ousted from the company and they changed the brand name to Lightning Volt. But this was not the first energy drink debacle at Forumele 1. In the 1999 season, a mysterious Nigerian prince and a fake energy drink led to the bankruptcy of an F1 team. You can't make this up. The 53rd season of Formula 1 began in 1999. Mika Hakkinen was defending his world title with the McLaren team, Michael Schumacher was recovering from a broken leg and the Arrows team was sorting out its finances.

Now to Prince Malik Ado Ibrahim. Prince Malik had made Arrows an offer of $125 million to become a sponsor of a money-hungry team like Arrows. $125 million could completely change his fortunes. Then team manager Tom Walkinshaw agreed to fill the bench with the Prince for season 99. The car was shared with Repsol. So the car was half Repsol orange and the rear half painted black with the T-Minus logo, quite a unique look I must give it. Prince Malik could always be found in the paddock with cameras surrounding him. He stole all the attention and never missed an opportunity to draw attention to his T-Minus brand.

What is T-Less you ask? Well, it was supposed to represent an energy drink. It had to represent an engine brand. It had to mean a lot. but it never came to anything. The plan was to debut the company in Formula 1 and then sell renowned products such as energy drinks, motors and bicycles under the name T-Minus. He even wanted to rename Lamborghinis with the T-Minus logo. Hey, have you seen my Lamborghini T-Minus? No. (Loud laughter) No. T-Minus was actually the third energy drink sponsored by Arrow in four years. The others were the Hype energy drink and Power Horse, for which we do not have the copyright.

Although T-Minus produced some energy drinks, they failed to turn a profit and at the end of season 99, Prince Malik was nowhere to be found. When they called him to buy the rest of his shares, no one could contact him and his shares were eventually bought by the investment company Morgan Grunfeld, who sued Arrow. The Arrows team was the victim of a real-life Nigerian prince scam and, unfortunately, the loss of funding led to the team's demise in 2002. But what happened to Prince Malik? Well, he showed up again a few years later to sponsor a NASCAR driver, but more on that later.

Hey, if you like this video so far, make sure to hit the subscribe button and click the bell so you never miss a video when it's online, which is every day of the week, crazy. One of the T-Minus logos, this mirrored one reminded me of a more recent mirrored logo, the Mission Winnow on current Ferrari cars. I think it looks great. But what is the Winnow Mission? Winning is the process by which chaff is removed from the grain during the grinding process. Mission Winnow has nothing to do with grain mills. when you go to their website there isn't much information, at least not useful information.

It's full of vague corporate terms and seems like a parody of a corporation. Just listen to this quote: "Innovate and invest in open dialogue" "Bringing people and companies closer together" "Creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem." His Twitter sounds like it's a robot programmed to cram as many business words into a sentence as possible. After further research, I discovered that Mission Winnow is actually a shell company of Philip Morris International or PMI. Know. the people who own Marlboro... Philip Morris Cigarettes has been a part of Formula 1 for decades. So why is it Mission Winnow and not Marlboro? In 2006 the FIA ​​banned tobacco sponsors in Formula 1, but as Mission Winnow is a new initiative that does not have tobacco products or rather, has no products, they are allowed to sponsor a car even though they are owned by a company. tobacco company. .

Technically, CSR is Corporate Social Responsibility in Jip and Janneke language. Mission Window includes activities aimed at improving public perception of a company by presenting it as a responsible member of society. In fact, it is defense of reputation. This wasn't the first time Philip Morris added complicated SSX. F1 fans may remember the barcode logo on the Ferrari car from a decade ago. That was Marlboro's attempt to be subversive, but groups like the Advertising Code Committee quickly caught on. Standing still, it looked like nothing more than vertical lines, but at high speed the barcode looked like the Marlboro Chevron.

The Mission Winnow logo is actually just a Marlboro Chevron but on its side. Same dimensions, same shapes, everything. For Marlboro it was a way to stay in Formula 1 without becoming part of it. Guys, it's a loophole, a loophole that the World Health Organization (WHO) will be taking a close look at soon. Last year, during the Australian Grand Prix, Ferrari was forced to remove the Mission Winnow logo from the flag due to Australia's strict tobacco advertising law. And it wasn't just Australian Scuderia Ferrari that was also forced to remove MIssion Winnow commercials from 11 of the 21 races in 2019.

It appears their advertising strategies went awry. (badum-tush) This could be a sign of things to come. Ferrari is not the only team that has a tobacco sponsor. McLaren is sponsored by A Better Tomorrow, owned by British American Tobacco. McLaren also had to withdraw its advertising before the start of the Australian Grand Prix. It's sloppy, but also brilliant, what Philip Morris is doing with Mission Winnow. That's guerrilla advertising. It makes people talk. I mean. Like, I'm making a video about it now. They won, clearly. Philip Morris puts its big, intriguing logo on its car that has nothing to do with cigarettes.

People notice, defend it, and Philip Morris gets free publicity. because people are inherently curious. I mean, again. I'm talking about it now. It's like when Radiohead released "In Rainbows" and years later when someone discovers that it fits with "OK Computer" and that it was all based on zeros and ones. It's like that. During the 2018 Australian Grand Prix, viewers were left confused by Eyetime posters and commercials. Eyetime was the main sponsor of the event, but no one had heard of this company. During this conference, CEO Maglena Krumova describes the all-in-one Eyetime app as innovative, social and up-to-date. because that's what an application sells me, if it's updated, but what is eyetime?

Well, it's a messaging app like WhatsApp, but it was actually more of an MLM or multi-level marketing scheme, also known as a pyramid scheme, and apparently they are still active, but what they actually do remains a mystery. In fact, Krumova started more pyramid schemes under the names Lyoness and My World, which also sponsored F1 for a time and Lyoness was even banned from doing business in Norway. If you can't do business in Norway, then I don't want to buy your product. Norway I'm going to buy your things. (badum-tush) If there's only one type of person that Formula 1 will attract, it's an old man with a lot of money.

That's probably why one of the sponsors of the 2018 Sugarbook Singapore Grand Prix was a dating app that matched younger sweet girls with older rich men. Although it never sponsored a car, Sugarbook co-sponsored a bar party hosted by Williams' main sponsor, Martini. It would be an unpleasant party if they hadn't canceled it. Probably because it had become a nightmare for Martini andprobably forWilliams. Look, I'm just a coward, but this is a good time to address ethics in F1. For a billion-dollar multinational corporation, Formula 1 gets away with behavior that isn't perfect. It exists in this strange dichotomy, okay?

On the one hand it is a world class sport, second in popularity after football, but on the other hand there are very dirty sponsorship deals and ruthless behavior and sometimes a disregard for human rights and unfortunately , it's been that way for a long, long time. . This may be a bit tiresome and a bit controversial, but when the governing body of a sport is sometimes morally bankrupt, a murky sponge doesn't seem like the end of the world and that's probably why Formula 1 attracts many people. Anytime you have a multi-million dollar organization, if you dig deep enough, something will go wrong.

So what happened to Prince Malik after he disappeared from the Arrows team in 1999? Well, he reappeared in America in 2005, this time to play NASCHAR Busch driver Robert Richardson Jr. sponsor. Prince Malik reportedly stole $750,000 from Richardson's father and, despite being acquitted, he was jailed in Texas for perjury. These days he is back in Nigeria and is nowhere to be seen on the racing scene. He continues hunting man. (laughs) no no... don't do it, don't steal money. Look, I love Formula 1. I will still follow it if it comes back this season, and I hope it does. I just think that when there is so much money involved in a thing and it has the world's attention, eventually there will be shady sponsors.

I hope I'm not on the blacklist of Formula 1. I hope they can invite me to something soon. Follow Donut on Instagram and Twitter @DonutMedia and follow me @nolanjsykes. Subscribe to Donut Media, we post a new video every day that is really crazy. Watch these videos about Formula 1 or Up of Speed. Now you can watch Up To Speed ​​- Formula 1. Be nice, don't steal money. Until next time. (music)