17 replies to this topic

[mariner]

The third in the BBC series on the importance of SA in F1 history.

 

https://www.bbc.co.u...africa/64684013

 

This time it credits John Love as the Pioneer of Sponsorship advertising on F1 cars. 

 

That might b technically true for F1 but I doubt it really triggered the Lotus etc sponsorship thoughts as Lotus and other UK teams had been involved in sponsorship  in their US entries well before that e.g the 1966 STP Lotuses at Indy .

 

Also as I remember it Chapman by-passed the FIA sponsorship rules by registering his entries  as " Gold Leaf Team Lotus " so the paint scheme was not strictly speaking sponsorship but just team colours?

 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of it the result was the wonderful JPS scheme topping off the great looks of the 72 and 79 for which I at least am very grateful.

[Risil]

Also not F1 but there was the Eldorado ice cream branded Maserati that Stirling Moss raced at the Monza 500 in 1958.

 

The Yeoman Credit Cooper had a red nose and central stripe, along with its minty shade of racing green. Was that corporate branding or was the red there for another reason?

[Vitesse2]

The text doesn't really explain properly though, being viewed only through the lens of F1. Until January 1st 1968 the FIA rules banned overt sponsorship on cars competing in events sanctioned by them as a full International - basically anything which counted for an FIA championship: F1, European F2, World Sports Car, World Rally, European Touring Car, European Hillclimb. Even before 1968 there were ways round the rules - Thin Wall Special, Yeoman Credit, Bowmaker Racing, British Vita Racing etc. Even Raymond Mays back in the 1920s - he named his Bugattis Cordon Bleu and Cordon Rouge after the champagne brands. I believe they were suitably grateful and repaid him 'in kind'.

 

Below FIA championship level individual national clubs could set their own rules - you can see small 'trade' decals on some mid-1960s cars competing in the Tasman Series for example. Lots of advertising in Latin American series too. In Europe it was probably most obvious in Italy, with advertising on cars running in the Mille Miglia and national Formula Junior events. And as Risil has noted, Maserati took advantage of the special rules for 'Monzanapolis'.

 

Nevertheless, Team Gunston were the first team to compete in any FIA championship with cars bearing overt corporate branding, rather than covert branding. The 1967 race mentioned in the BBC piece was part of the South African F1 Championship - not an FIA series, so the South Africans must have relaxed their rules before January 1st 1968.

[Rob G]

Roger Penske drove a gold Lotus for Dupont Team Zerex in the 1962 US Grand Prix. Where does that fall in the realm of sponsorship? Zerex antifreeze/coolant was the product and Dupont was the company behind it, and the car had the words "Team Zerex" painted on the sides.

Edited by Rob G, 08 March 2023 - 00:39.

[D28]

Roger Penske drove a gold Lotus for Dupont Team Zerex in the 1962 US Grand Prix. Where does that fall in the realm of sponsorship? Zerex antifreeze/coolant was the product and Dupont was the company behind it, and the car had the words "Team Zerex" painted on the sides.

Image Modelltoys-Austria

[E1pix]

I miss the days when one could promote their legal product on a race car.

It was incredibly good for racing, and here in the States, about the same time it became illegal to put a cigarette logo on a car, suddenly promoting liquor in the very same venue was made legal. Go figure — and now, toxic drugs are on plenty of cars and pushed harder than in alleyways on probably 30% of all tv adverts.

The Gold Leaf branding was beautiful. It seems, in pictures anyway, that the earliest 72s in black and gold used a metallic gold. I’ve done my share of gold leaf in my past life of signs, and presume that’s what was done. There must have been lots of budget, as cut-and-spray painting would have cost substantially less if metallic gold was the goal.

Wandering the Convention Center’s indoor paddock at Long Beach in 1983, I was surprised to not only see that the John Player graphics were still hand-lettered, but at least in that season, in a simple brushable enamel paint mix of no metallic at all. I’ve long wondered since when Lotus moved away from the gold leaf (or sprayed metallic gold).

[Gary C]

E1pix, you need to get a copy of my Lotus 72 documentary then. £20 for 4 and a quarter hours ofv72 loveliness: www.lotus72dvd.com

[E1pix]

Agreed Gary, I bought them a couple years ago.

[2F-001]

Was the move away from a more true gold effect to a (slightly brighter?) painted colour something to do with how well the livery appeared on film or tv?

[Gary C]

It surely was! Peter Warr told us that the car used to take 4 books of gold leaf every time it was re-done. It was purely so that the car stood out on the TV. I think he said the move to Duckhams coincided with a downhill turn in the team's finances so they then moved to yellow paint in 1974 and 1975.

[E1pix]

Was the move away from a more true gold effect to a (slightly brighter?) painted colour something to do with how well the livery appeared on film or tv?

I wouldn’t doubt it Tony, if the decision went beyond mere budget, practicality (such as, what if a panel needs matching on a race weekend?), and durability.

“Brighter” depends entirely on light when it comes to gold paint and gold leaf. In bright sunlight, real leaf radiates so gleamingly as to almost be painful to look at, but in dim light it fails terribly. A traditional lettering enamel mixed to a contrasty shade would definitely be more legible under varied lighting conditions, not to mention being very durable when applied correctly.

Another, much-cheaper technique uses “gold size” — a very slow-drying varnish of sorts that’s applied with a little blended color so you can see what the brush is doing — with a gold-looking (probably brass) powder dry-brushed over the (very!) slightly-tacky size. If done right, it looks like it was lettered in metallic gold paint (which is terrible to work with in brush mediums), but without varnishing does not hold up well to even repeated waxing.

The side number panels on the 72s always struck me as having been spray painted over a mask, but I’m on the fence about the balance of the cars.

The more I think about it, the less I think the cars ever used actual gold leaf... the gold material on “patent leaf” is about 1/250,000 of an inch thick, and even when applied onto slow size it’s remarkably durable it’s a very tedious process and slow-going in the best of cases.

Sorry for the diversion(s).

Edit: Saw your reply, Gary. Interesting comment from Peter, neat to confirm that. I will add, though, that the 72s would have taken *a lot* more than four books, each book covering less than two square feet of perimeter over each graphic. But in the day the materials were a lot cheaper than labor so not a deciding factor.

Edited by E1pix, 08 March 2023 - 08:26.

[Vitesse2]

Roger Penske drove a gold Lotus for Dupont Team Zerex in the 1962 US Grand Prix. Where does that fall in the realm of sponsorship? Zerex antifreeze/coolant was the product and Dupont was the company behind it, and the car had the words "Team Zerex" painted on the sides.

Right on the fringe of the rules, like Bowmaker Racing and Yeoman Credit Racing - they were both finance companies, but by using those as the official team names they could get their name in the programme. British Vita - which sponsored a team of Minis (VitaMins - geddit?) - is a long-established manufacturer of things like foams and upholstery fabrics. The team was officially 'British Vita Racing' and even before overt sponsorship was legal there was usually a V visible somewhere on their cars - here's Harry Ratcliffe:

 

 

https://mk1-performa...ita_history.htm

 

AAA rules may have been slightly more relaxed - the 'Team Zerex' branding was probably a compromise, given that Roger could have legitimately argued that the works Lotuses had 'Team Lotus' on the sides, but the FIA would likely have nixed using Dupont as part of the branding. Added to which, I'm not sure if Zerex was sold outside North America?

[john winfield]

Right on the fringe of the rules, like Bowmaker Racing and Yeoman Credit Racing - they were both finance companies, but by using those as the official team names they could get their name in the programme. British Vita - which sponsored a team of Minis (VitaMins - geddit?) - is a long-established manufacturer of things like foams and upholstery fabrics. The team was officially 'British Vita Racing' and even before overt sponsorship was legal there was usually a V visible somewhere on their cars - here's Harry Ratcliffe:

 

 

https://mk1-performa...ita_history.htm

 

 

 

Ah, the perils of sponsorship. Drifting OT with Harry R, I thought for years that the Minis' s Vita sponsor made Vita-weat crackers. They may not have been to everyone's taste but I don't think they were made of polyurethane foam. I might be wrong.

[Roger Clark]

Was sponsorship ever against the rules?  I thought that it was just advertising on cars that was banned; a rules that was relaxed in 1968.  Racing teams had been sponsored for many years by fuel companies and component suppliers.  They could get value by advertising: "Gibralter Grand Prix won on our widgets". The few non-trade sponsors couldn't get much value until they were allowed to advertise on the cars.

 

I think the 1968 rules specified a maximum size for such advertisements by specifying a maximum size.  Chapman got round it by painting the whole car in his sponsors colours.  I don't know when the rule requiring national colours was scrapped.  

[Parkesi]

Monza/Italian GP 1965.

#28 Geki Russo

Team Lotus logo & two big written adverts on the tanks below.

"Salumi Rondanini, Busto Garolfo - Milano"

[Vitesse2]

Monza/Italian GP 1965.

#28 Geki Russo

Team Lotus logo & two big written adverts on the tanks below.

"Salumi Rondanini, Busto Garolfo - Milano"

I'd forgotten about that. Here's DSJ's report from his usual 'Reflections' column:

 

There was a strange little ceremony in the paddock on the morning of the race when Colin Chapman was presented with two cases of salami (and a pocketful of lire?) in exchange for putting an advertisement for this particular brand of salami on the Lotus that “Geki” was to drive. The Team Lotus mechanics, who don’t like salami anyway, were justifiably muttering about this, and suggesting that instead of wasting their time attaching these adverts the little man organising the business could help them prepare the cars for the race. The same was happening in the Brabham team, where Baghetti’s car was also carrying salami advertising, and this was brought about because the Italians have a national rule that permits their drivers to have advertising on their cars, in spite of an F.I.A. rule that forbids it. As the Lotus Mechanics said, they were not allowed to have Esso transfers on their cars, even though it is Esso petrol money that keeps Team Lotus going, so why should they stick salami adverts on the cars when they don’t even eat the stuff. Presumably “Geki” and Baghetti do eat it.

Motorsport Images has a clear picture of Russo's car with advertising, but the only one I can find of Baghetti (a very blurred one on eBay - item number 363532068997) seems to show that the advert was on only one side of the car - the driver's right - which would actually have meant hardly anybody would have seen it!

[Parkesi]

Lat Archive/Motorsport Images „Monza 1965“ have pics of #28 with adverts on BOTH sides of the Lotus. Thanks to Copyright I did not put pictures in the TNF. Just have a look! Pages 10,16,17.

[Parkesi]

There is even a 1:43 version incl. the Salami advert: LOTUS 25 N.28 GIACOMO RUSSO ""GEKI"" 1965 GP ITALIANO Modello Spark Formula