- At the time I asked a Shell executive about partnering a team linked to tobacco. He quipped that their forecourts probably earned more money from cigarettes than petrol. Oh, and in a flash of reverse psychology, in certain countries where laws permitted printing on fag packs, Marlboro sneakily took to depicting likenesses of Ferrari F1 cars. After all, pictures of plain red racing cars were not regulated…
That was the status quo until last year’s Japanese Grand Prix, when and where PMI announced its Mission Winnow initiative, a corporate exercise aimed at “ensuring that one day all smokers quit cigarettes and switch to better alternatives”. Cynics, of course created two distinct words out of Win-Now, with Ferrari and Kimi Räikkönen obliging a race later in the USA. Still the cars were entered all year by Scuderia Ferrari.
That changed last week with the publication of the FIA’s revised entry list, which reflects Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow as team name. Almost immediately the Department of Health in the State of Victoria, host state to the Australian Grand Prix, began investigations into whether Mission Winnow is used to promote a tobacco product.
PMI says not. It has now been joined in similar denials by newly announced McLaren primary sponsor BAT, who on Monday announced it will have an “on-car and off-car presence throughout the season, at all times in line with applicable regulation and legislation”. RaceFans understands the car will highlight BAT’s “new-to-world and thought-leading “A Better Tomorrow” platform”.
This is to be expected. The profit model for tobacco companies is a tried and true one. Hook kids and teenagers by making smoking look cool, really set the hook by making sure that entry-level products contain addiction-reinforcing levels of nicotine. The fact that they were stopped for any length of time is great, but corporate entities are by their nature a-moral and profit-focused. Tobacco makes THE MOST money when kids start smoking and don't stop until dead.
In a way they were never really stopped. After this crash, I read how an anonymous tobacco spokesperson said what he saw was two packs of Marlboro smashing into each other. The article mentions that Philip Morris has continued to sponsor Ferrari with $100 m/year and from what I've heard they get a veto on which other sponsor decals gets on the car. Maurizio Arrivabene who was their team principal before this season came directly from a VP position at Marlboro. I wonder what the demographics of F1 fans looks like these days. From what I've heard TV ratings has been sloping downwards for a long time now since moving the live streams to premium channels in many countries, and I wonder if they are gaining any fans in the younger segments. Most of the time it's not an exciting sport to watch, the playing field is hilariously uneven, and everyone involved has been trying to milk as much money out of each other for a long time now.