Sponsor Watch: Austria, Britain and Hungary 2015

Sponsor Watch

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A few new brands appeared on the cars during the previous three grands prix – and one name featured on almost all of them at the last race.

Force India

Force India’s car is not short of Mexican sponsors or alcohol brands, but the team found room for another at the Austraian Grand Prix. The logos of Mexican premium wine brand Cavall appeared on the VJM08’s headrests.

Manor

The most striking announcement of the last three races came from tail-enders Manor, who added the branding of shipping container manufacturer Flex Box to their sidepods at Silverstone, and revising the colour accordingly.

For Silverstone only, the logo of data company Clifford Thames also returned to the team’s car having previously featured in 2013.

For their home race Manor also paid tribute to their employees who had helped resurrect the team’s Formula One effort during the off-season. Note the recent addition of former Mercedes designer Bob Bell:

McLaren

While there were few other new logos on the cars at the last few races, some teams varied their liveries according to local branding differences or to highlight different sponsors.

McLaren featured a unique sidepod design at the British Grand Prix to celebrate its 10th year in partnership with alcohol brand Johnnie Walker, advertising the drink-driving campaign #JoinThePact, which since 2008 has been active in 40 countries and collected 2.4 million commitments to never drink and drive.

Lotus

The Lotus featured enhanced branding for Microsoft at the British Grand Prix, with their Lumia brand being advertised more prominently on the car.

Williams

In Britain, Williams swapped their Rexona logos for local brand Sure.

Jules Bianchi tributes

The Hungarian Grand Prix was the first race to follow the death of Jules Bianchi. He had tested for Ferrari, run in Friday practice sessions for Force India and raced for Marussia, and had competed against every driver in the field at one time or another in his racing career.

The drivers carried tributes to him on their helmet and most the cars also bore ‘#JB17’ or similar logos (if the Red Bull had one, it was very discreet, although they did acknowledge him in several other ways).

See here for more pictures of the tributes to Bianchi made at the Hungarian Grand Prix:

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23 comments on “Sponsor Watch: Austria, Britain and Hungary 2015”

  1. Remembering the tributes paid by the teams at the 2001 Italian Grand Prix, most notably the black nose cone on the Ferrari cars, I was quite disappointed in Hungary with the apparent lack of significantly visible tributes on the cars following the tragic death of Jules. Perhaps times have changed and a small HashTag on a sparsely sponsor covered car is the modern equivalent of the black armband or nose cone.

    1. Regardless of the context of your comment, let’s not even try to compare the death of one man during a sporting event with one of the largest terrorist atrocities committed in recent memory…

      A better comparison would be Monaco ’94. Did any teams drop their on-car sponsorship then?

      1. If I recall correctly Williams ran a livery without any sponsors and retired the car on lap 1.

        1. Hill’s car was retired on lap 1 because he crashed at the start (they only raced 1 car). I can’t remember the livery used.

          1. Tommy Scragend
            11th August 2015, 13:09

            Williams ran their usual livery on Hill’s car at Monaco in 1994. As shown here :-

            http://www.spannerhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1994_F1_9.jpg

  2. McLaren featured a unique sidepod design at the British Grand Prix to celebrate its 10th year in partnership with alcohol brand Johnnie Walker

    LOL…really? I think it was more a better something than nothing scenario!

    1. Nah. Unlike the smaller teams, McLaren doesn’t need the ad space taken. Ron already stated earlier that he’d rather nothing on the pods than sell the space cheap.

      1. ColdFly F1 (@)
        10th August 2015, 15:11

        Nah, McLaren can rely on their prize money :p @selbbin

      2. petebaldwin (@)
        10th August 2015, 15:59

        @selbbin – They don’t need sponsorship but when they have struggled to sell the spot for years, putting “join the pact” on the side of the car isn’t a great idea. It certainly didn’t make me think of drink/driving. It made me think of the old HRT livery that basically had “PLEASE SPONSOR US” scrawled across it!

        1. Really? It didn’t come across like that at all to me. And it does say ‘Never Drink and Drive’ right below, so I thought of drinking and driving right away…

  3. The drivers carried tributes to him on their helmet and most the cars also bore ‘#JB17′ or similar logos (if the Red Bull had one, it was very discreet, although they did acknowledge him in several other ways).

    Red Bull: https://twitter.com/redbulluk/status/625272110345289728

    1. @Iheela Top marks for finding it!

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      10th August 2015, 15:31

      There was a #JB17 hidden on the front wing mount and both drivers had #CiaoJules on their helmets. But that top-right image in the RBR tweet seems to be the Manor! @lheela

      1. “hidden”

  4. ColdFly F1 (@)
    10th August 2015, 15:19

    Ⓔ ‘Circle E’ seems to be sponsoring all cars ;)

    1. @coldfly
      It must cost them a fortune sponsoring all of the teams, and even though they’ve been doing it for decades I still have no idea who they are, or what they do.

      1. That’s poor return of investment there.

        1. Not as bad as their competitor ‘Circle N’ Ⓝ who have a much less prominent advertising position.

          1. Lewisham Milton
            11th August 2015, 13:32

            They like to be in a neutral position on the car.
            Easier to see than some of the car numbers, though!

    2. Outstanding!

  5. what is the little skull on bottom of the side pod on the force india ( next to univa )?

    1. @dubaemon Skullcandy headphones.
      And speaking of Force India, that Caval wine is made just a couple of minutes drive from where I live, what a coincidence!
      In fact I remember Pérez visited the factory around two months ago, it was in the local newspapers and all. What a small world we live in.

      1. thanks

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