When did sponsorship first appear in F1?

[Rollo]

Napier green and wasn't "Bugatti bleu" deliberately selected to be the exact colour of a make of cigarette (Gitanes?) to tie in to an advertising campaign.

I think in this context, Indianapolis should not be considered "Formula 1" as it was a different culture from Europe. "Blue Crown Spark Plug Special" makes sense but I do think the "Sugar-ripe Prune Special" was carrying things a bit far.

I did the research for this, comparing colour scheme with corporate colours and checked through the list of Indy 500 winners against their corporate colours. The "Blue Crown Spark Plug Special" wasn't actually in the corporate colours of the Blue Crown Spark Plug company.

Mr Capps has a fair point in that the mechanism for funding in the United States was entirely different and I think that the reason for that is twofold.

- the sheer lack of manufacturers generally.
- their indifference to motorsport.

Europe had and still has lots of smaller brands competing for sales across borders, whereas the US always had the concentration of a few manufacturers.

[wedge]

Not F1 but the Race of Two Worlds:

[youtube]RYBTxG8D_d0[/youtube]

[FAL]

I think in this context, Indianapolis should not be considered "Formula 1" as it was a different culture from Europe. I do think the "Sugar-ripe Prune Special" was carrying things a bit far.

Perhaps the prunes explains why there were no doors in the "men's room" at Indianapolis until NGH complained?

[FAL]

55 square inches was the permitted maximum dimension (in pairs, one each side) for the number of stickers permitted (5?).

and I even suffered with the b*stards counting them and measuring them on my car on the RAC Rally...

[D-Type]

Perhaps the prunes explains why there were no doors in the "men's room" at Indianapolis until NGH complained?

Nice one!

[Don Capps]

The entry of the British credit companies on the racing scene with Yeoman Credit/Bowmaker Finance and United Dominion Trust sponsoring racing teams under their names rather than the British Racing Partnership (BRP) or Reg Parnell (Racing). More than few had their knickers in a wad with such "crass commercialism" at the time and this attitude carried over to later when revisionists airbrushed the teams (shades of the Soviet commissars...) from the entry lists replacing them with BRP or Reg Parnell as appropriate.

I think that we Americans too often confuse British attitudes as reflecting contemporary European/ Continental attitudes when it comes to various motor racing matters. This is in no small part due to the language advantage, of course. It was aided as well by a proclivity to defer to the British on such matters, as misguided as this may have been many times. It is interesting that it was not until Stirling Moss came along that being a professional racing driver was faintly respectable in Britain. While there had been those before Moss who certainly earned money in the racing game, this was often in addition to other employment, often in some aspect of the "motor trade." In addition, it is almost forgotten today that until the latter part of the Fifties that Britain was, to be kind, pretty much a back-of-the-grid sort when it came to racing. While it had the occasional success -- Jaguar and Le Mans, for instance -- on the race track, it was the Continentals who ruled the roost. A close reading of much of the writing during this period is, frankly, grousing about the Continentals with a heavy dose of whining and sniveling about the poor Brits being manhandled by the nasty folks across the Channel.

For the most part, the American racing scene was, at most, a curiosity.

When things finally tilted in the direction of the Brits, they were not necessarily gracious victors. As David Mamet is credited with saying,"It is not enough for me to win. My enemies must lose."

Which brings us to the Americans.

For brief moment in time, beginning in the latter part of the Fifties until maybe a decade or so later, there was almost a Camelot-like situation when racing freely flowed back and forth across the Atantic. Americans had the Europeans -- mostly in the form of the Brits as much as they disliked being associated with those beings who lived in that vague area across The Water to the east -- inflicted upon them and likewise the Americans cames to Europe. The winners who emerged in this exchange were the Brits. When it became apparent that money was to be made, they flocked to the Former Colony to pick up each and every dollar that they could pry loose. This eventually created an imperial-like situation where the local natives had their indigenous craft industries crushed by exports from Britain.

One thing that the Brits found was that there was more than one way to fund your racing team and that the painting the cars to suit the sponsors was less painful when the bags of dollars provided the necessary solace for the tortured soul.

Brits in Blazers embraced this concept rather warily, still smarting that there were now referees for Rugby matches or that anyone outside the Motor Trade would even imagine being involved in something so plebian as what motor racing had now become, Gentlemen now being rather scarce on the grid those days. Forced to be pragmatic, the Blazers made the introduction of commercial sponsorship as inconvenient and uncomfortable as possible, attempted to stem the tide as long as possible: however, they were as successful as Harold at the shore. Once that glimmer of gold and dreams of riches caught both the eye and the imagination, that it was an American idea was promptly disregarded, once again demonstrating that greed is univeral. Sponsorship was embraced and the Blazers relegated to being nusiances rather than arbiters.

All this eventually led to the colonization of American motor racing, of course.

This is the highly condensed, edited version of what happened, but you might still get the drift....

[Rollo]

The then RACMSA also permitted advertising in its UK motorsport from 1.1.68. A rare instance for the time of alignment of new regulations with FIA (or CSI, FISA or whatever it was that week). 55 square inches was the permitted maximum dimension (in pairs, one each side) for the number of stickers permitted (5?).

If this is true, then can I just say that Lotus was very very canny indeed.

The Lotus 49 in Team Gold Leaf colours, actually has very little in the way of actual advertising:


If you actually look at it, there's a few sponsors on the nose and half way down the side there is a "Gold Leaf Team Lotus" panel but that's it.

I'm guessing that Chapman looked at exactly what the regulations said and determined that a colour scheme, doesn't actually constitute advert space. Most of the car is a single gloss red colour, which from an absolutely legal technical reading of the rules, is no different to the orange McLaren which sits next to it in shot.

That if it's true, is pure magic.

[FAL]

Are you suggesting it's not true?
Were you involved at the time?
The entrant's name was exempt from the 55 square inch advert regulation - IF you had purchased an "advertising permit". This was quite an expense for a private entrant on a low budget but not a significant cost to major entrants, even then.
There must always have been an allowance for the entrant's name eg Team Lotus, Owen Organisation.
The RACMSA advertising permit was carefully designed as a "self destruct" foil sticker for the dashboard, preventing you from transferring it to another car....

[D-Type]

The 1975 FIA 'yellow book' says that advertising on cars is free, but subject to any restrictions made by a National Automobile Club or race organiser in their Supplementary Regulations.

I've a copy of the 1970 RAC 'blue book' but the advertising regulations are a page long and that's too much to type at this time of night. In essence
(a) The event sponsor or title, the entrant's name and the driver's name were permitted.
(b) Any number of displays, each less than 55 sq ins and not related to each other were permitted.
(c) For televised races the permitted advertising was different: 8 pairs of 'credits' per car. A 'credit' being company name without logos etc but corporate colours allowed, size 20 x 7 cms each.