<div id="readability-page-1"> <time datetime="2025-12-14T09:00:00+00:00"> Sunday 14 December 2025 9:00 am </time> | Updated: <time datetime="2025-12-12T14:23:16+00:00"> Friday 12 December 2025 2:23 pm </time> <figure> <div> </div> <img width="742" height="495" src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://www.cityam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GettyImages-2206469359-e1765548328747.jpg/query-dz03NDI?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://www.cityam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GettyImages-2206469359-e1765548328747.jpg/query-dz03NDI"/> <figcaption>Formula 1 offer car makers like Ferrari the chance to market themselves</figcaption> </figure> It’s an old adage, but one particularly true for automotive brands, that where you show up as a brand really matters. Staples for car marketing are high-quality environments such as cinema, peak TV, eye-catching billboards and the like. Especially for cars – a category in which long-range priming is key – these quality touchpoints shape our preference for certain brands. This is why an association with Formula 1 has become a new key brand canvas, offering carmakers an exciting, glamorous and global opportunity to stay culturally relevant while showing engineering expertise. Whether you’re a Tifosi, part of Verstappen’s Orange Army, or a card-carrying McLarenista, all F1 fans have been treated to a thrilling season with a fitting climax in Abu Dhabi. And once more, we have a British world champion in Lando Norris. The sport is in rude health, not least because of its inexorable growth in popularity among young people (especially women). It remains one of the world’s most watched, and deeply factionalised, sporting phenomena. And marketing dollars are flowing back into the sport, with sponsorship investment up a projected 10 per cent year on year in 2025. While the sport’s cultural renaissance shows up across a spectrum – from Brad Pitt’s labour-of-love F1 movie this year to the continuing popularity of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series (the catalyst for many female fans getting into the sport) to the rise of Formula E, which is breaking records for viewership and digital engagement. <h2 id="h-why-f1-matters-for-ev-makers">Why F1 matters for EV makers</h2>And, while it has its critics, The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) knows how to keep up and refresh for what is clearly a new era of automotive, EV-only manufacturers and an evolving consumer base. The new car regulations for 2026 – a 50:50 split in powertrain technology between petrol and electric – are an open invite to legacy and EV-only manufacturers to get involved in the global showpiece for automotive excellence that F1 offers.It’s no surprise then to see automotive powerhouses such as Ford kicking off a technical partnership with Red Bull next year, supplying its 350 kW electric motor and power unit control software to the Toro Rosso outfit. Ford CEO Jim Farley called the move “all about where we are going as a company – increasingly electric, software-defined modern vehicles and experiences.”Some may have expected the rise of EVs and EV-only brands to have undermined Formula 1’s position at the apex of all global motorsport. Not so. The F1 championship remains at the forefront of modern automotive excellence, providing a marketing halo effect that all car brands, whether they’re in F1 or not, can lean into. For the car brands I work with, differentiation has become twofold. These brands are well defined against their historic peers, but the EV market is full of new and starkly different competitors. Brands like BYD, Tesla and Chery are rooted in their electric models – sleek, clean, with notably social-first media strategies. They use a completely different playbook, marketing cars more like a tech company than the iconic print adverts we’ve come to know for the likes of Volkswagen and Porsche. <h2 id="h-marketers-reacting-to-f1-s-resurgence">Marketers reacting to F1’s resurgence</h2>But while car brands such as Ford and Audi may not be at the centre of hackathons, they have always been at the forefront of technological innovation. It’s why racing is such a natural home, striking the perfect balance between legacy and technological advances across a large spectrum of engineering innovation. Being associated with Grands Prix is no new thing for many carmakers. For some, it’s a foundational part of their legacy. But, for a number of reasons, many commentators now see Formula 1 as a sport that feels new and reinvigorated. Its resurgence in pop culture is well evidenced and marketers are reacting. Analysts estimate F1 pulled in around $2.9bn in sponsorships this year, reinforcing engineering credibility and innovation. Even sceptics have to admit F1 is a super-premium environment. Races air on television each Sunday (although practice is often just as engrossing on Friday and Saturday), F1 features in Hollywood blockbusters and lives a second life on social media. It merges the old and the new with ease, expertise, and glamour. What illustrates a carmaker’s reliability, its safety credentials and its innovative engineering better than seeing one of its drivers fling their machine into Eau Rouge and emerge in one piece, still in the lead? Here’s to the 2026 season being brim full of those moments for Lando – with plenty of rewards for our greatest car brands.Jem Lloyd-Williams is Chief Strategy Officer at WPP Media. </div>

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Formula 1 is reengineering car branding by offering a global platform for carmakers to showcase engineering expertise and stay culturally relevant. The sport's popularity is growing, especially among young people and women, with sponsorship investments projected to rise by 10% in 2025. F1's adaptation to new automotive trends, including a 50:50 powertrain split for 2026, invites both legacy and EV-only manufacturers to participate, reinforcing its position as a marketing powerhouse.

How Formula 1 is reengineering car branding