McLaren - Sponsorship, Naming and Livery

Sponsorship, Naming and Livery

McLaren's Formula One team was originally called Bruce McLaren Motor Racing and for their first season ran white-and-green coloured cars as a result of a deal with the makers of the film Grand Prix. The most famous livery in the early years was the all-orange one of 1968–1971, also used in Can-Am and at the Indianapolis 500 and revived occasionally for pre-season testing in later years. The RAC and FIA governing bodies relaxed their rules about on-car advertising in 1968 allowing Lotus to pioneer commercial sponsorship in Formula One with their Gold Leaf liveried cars. Thus in 1972, the Yardley cosmetics company became McLaren's first title sponsor and the colour scheme changed to a predominantly white one. In 1974, Philip Morris joined as title sponsor through their Marlboro cigarette brand, whilst one car continued to run—ostensibly by a separate team—with Yardley livery for the year. Marlboro's red-and-white branding lasted until 1996, during which time the team went by various names incorporating the word "Marlboro", making it the then longest running Formula One sponsorship (now surpassed by Hugo Boss's 1981–present deal with McLaren). It was then replaced by Reemtsma's West cigarette branding and a silver-and-black livery in 1997, the official name becoming West McLaren Mercedes.

By mid-2005, a European Union directive banning tobacco advertising caused McLaren to end its association with West. For the 2006 season a red-and-silver colour scheme was adopted as they went without a title sponsor and were known simply as Team McLaren Mercedes, before the start of their current deal with Vodafone in 2007, since then the official team name has been Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. Aside from title sponsors, other current sponsors and suppliers include Diageo (Johnnie Walker whisky brand), Aigo, Aral, Bosch, FedEx, Hugo Boss, H&R, Hilton Hotels, Kenwood, Mazak, Mobil 1, Sandtler, Santander, SAP, Stihl, Lenovo, Sparco, X-Trade Brokers, Reebok, Würth and GlaxoSmithKline (Lucozade brand).

McLaren's early cars were named simply with the letter M followed by a number and sometimes a letter denoting the model. Since the 1981 merger with Project Four, the cars have been called "MP4/x", or since 2001 "MP4-x", where x is the generation of the chassis (e.g. MP4/1, MP4-22). "MP4" stood initially for "Marlboro Project 4", so that the full title of the cars (McLaren MP4/x) reflected not only the historical name of the team, but also the names of the team's major sponsor and its new component part. Since the change of title sponsor in 1997, "MP4" is now said to stand for "McLaren Project 4".