Racing’s Second Revolution - Part 4: Building a Business Around Racing Independent of Sponsorship
In the first three parts of this series, we mapped the theoretical journey from sponsorship dependence to IP ownership:
Now comes the hard part: execution.
This final chapter isn’t about dropping sponsors overnight.
It’s about doing the work now so that, over time, sponsors become as close as possible to optional accelerants instead of lifelines; this final installment in the Racing’s Second Revolution series will cover several examples to illustrate how teams and drivers at different stages of notoriety and growth can reach that point.
With the foundation described in the previous installments in-place, this is now moving to exactly what it sounds like: building a business around racing. If this sounds far-fetched, consider that in the current paradigm, racing survives as a marketing platform for sponsors; with effort and time, why can’t teams become a marketing platform for their own products and services?
Certainly, this type of entrepreneurship carries risk and many obstacles. Covering every possible obstacle for every example is out of scope for this installment and it will be up to the racing organizations to do their homework properly before embarking on such ventures.
Furthermore, to avoid any confusion, this series has rested on the idea of “ownable” content in opposition to quick-hit material made for social networks.
For these examples, teams should have cleared the “storytelling” stage in the Vaucher Analytics Motorsport Relevance Pyramid and we will refer to “content” as anything that leverages a team or driver’s IP; this could include the audio and video we usually associate with this term, but it could also include any number of branded and/or licensed products and services (some examples of which are illustrated in this fourth installment).
In fact, the content in question should include as much offline material as possible because it can’t ever be truly owned if a platform hosts it and takes a cut of the revenue it generates. Indications also point to Gen-Z in particular yearning for a return to analog consumption, so now is the perfect time for motorsports teams, hopefully having primed their fans online during the rise of social media, to step back into the real world with marketing and initiatives that they manage and profit from as fully as possible.
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In less than 500 words.
Small teams: Creativity and community as currency
There’s no chance that small racing series will have the storytelling might of F1 or even the WRC behind them. That doesn’t mean they can’t use their creativity to generate buzz (and income).
Local artist collabs
A regional GT or karting team partners with a local illustrator or streetwear designer to create a limited-run capsule: probably tees and hoodies with some special pieces thrown in (perhaps high quality photography or art prints).
The key here is to lean into the local aspect with both subject matter and artist; the idea is to make fans feel as deeply connected the team and its local roots as much as possible. If that connection comes through immediately in the art and/or design, the team and its collaboration partner have already removed the majority of the friction towards making a sale.
Production risk is also limited because each drop is small, maybe 100 pieces, but it’s local press gold and creates owned IP that can return every season with new art.
This type of activity can be leveraged by both the artist and the team and/or driver, since both fan bases can be exposed to each other.
Each side should reach out to news and social media outlets in their respective worlds as the project could be interesting enough to get picked up by any of them, amplifying a small project into something much larger.
Tangibly, a single 100-piece merch drop for just one line of hoodies might net €3,000–5,000 and generate press worth 10x that in exposure depending on the reach of those items.
Utilizing the garage as a creative space
Your garage (and, of course, your race cars) can be used for a lot more than their assumed purpose.
Between races, the team could rent out its facilities to musicians, artists or even film students for filming purposes. Such a measure could earn side income immediately, but the really interesting benefits are long-term.
Such initiatives will allow a race team to embed itself in the community’s creative scene. With this status, the team can source new artists for the drops described earlier, and from a commercial point of view it will understand what appeals to certain demographics, perhaps even those it might wish to turn into race fans.
To the extent some pitching to sponsors is still required, this on-the-ground insight is highly valuable knowledge, and perhaps this newly acquired creative network will even help source new sponsorship opportunities, creating a virtuous circle that makes sourcing and closing sponsorship deals that much easier.
If you have ever found yourself spending days frantically dialing people tangentially associated with your network in the slimmest hope that they might be interested in sending money your way, this type of win-win networking leveraging assets you already could turn into a substantial time and energy saver down the line.
Mid-tier / Factory-backed teams: Turning brand heritage into experiences
For factory-backed or manufacturer-aligned teams, the next step up the Vaucher Analytics Relevance Pyramid is also about monetizing identity through experiences, but with more ambition. These teams already have the credibility, engineering talent, and design language, but what’s missing is turning that equity into owned, living IP.
A great recent example comes from Alpine, which has begun to move far beyond traditional motorsport marketing, and while this is a brand involved in F1, its approach could theoretically be adopted by other factory competitors in the WEC.
In 2025, Alpine opened the Atelier Alpine Paris, following up on a similar concept opened in Barcelona in 2024 and with another planned for London’s affluent Mayfair area.
This is an immersive brand space that merges racing, design, and lifestyle. Across multiple floors, visitors can explore show cars, try simulators, enjoy a motorsport bar, and personalize products.
These spaces are not dealerships, they are cultural hubs.
The goal isn’t to sell cars in this space, it’s to make motorsport culture as interpreted by Alpine part of everyday life, which could then eventually sell more cars.
In the meantime, Alpine can generate revenues by selling its own merchandise, hosting events, and reaching out to customers who may not have known anything about the brand before walking into the boutique. The world “platform” has come up often in this series, and with this space Alpine has created an offline, analog platform for itself it can leverage to deploy future marketing or sales projects.
The locations for these spaces alone are indicative of a massive project budget, but actually this kind of approach can be replicated, at different scales, across the motorsport ecosystem. For instance, why couldn’t the WRC set up pop-up stores at events such as the World Marathon Majors, or any gathering likely to have groups of active participants who enjoy doing things outdoors?
By leveraging such traveling events, series or teams don’t have the high fixed costs of rents, and they can associate themselves tightly with certain events; in the above example, someone following these marathons would over time come to associate their values with those of the WRC and vice versa.
These initiatives require resources, absolutely, but they also create new revenue channels (ticketed events, product sales, licensing) and new data streams that sponsors can’t or won’t provide.
The principle is always the same: stop marketing the racing team as nothing more than a rolling billboard and start selling what racing, and, more importantly, your brand’s participation in racing, represent.
When a brand’s design, craftsmanship, and competitive spirit become things fans can touch, wear, or experience daily, over time the dependency on sponsors will diminish and race teams will find themselves with more options to support their racing campaigns.
Elite Formula 1 teams: Flexing some of the world’s most valuable names
Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport with the budgets to match. Still, despite branching out commercially in ways that would be unimaginable to early F1 figures such as Colin Chapman (himself a pioneer of sponsorship on race cars with the iconic, but tabacco-related, John Player Special liveries), it still relies heavily on the sponsorship model originally laid out by Ron Dennis in the early 1980’s.
The risks presented by a lack of fully diversified revenue streams were put on full display in the wake of the global pandemic, at which point several teams faced severe financial distress. Today, with viewership at all-time highs and much healthier financials, F1 teams have the means to explore some truly innovative projects.
This tier’s opportunity lies in already having an enormous following of affluent fans. If products are conceived with care and based on data indicating their fans’ other interests, the potential is there for lucrative margins. The following two cases are purely hypothetical and made with no knowledge at all of the internal plans of the teams mentioned.
McLaren - High-end fragrance
McLaren’s brand has always been built on precision, materials, and refinement, and these are qualities that align perfectly with the world of high-end fragrance, a luxury segment that happens to be fast-growing owing to intensifying interest from Gen-Z.
Ferrari already has a line of licensed fragrances (among other items) but these don’t reflect the brand’s luxury positioning in the automotive world (Image source: www.fragrantica.fr
Ferrari has licensed its name to fragrances for years but these are priced at the mass market. Now imagine a niche-level scent from McLaren, an “engineered eau de parfum” crafted with the same obsessive attention to detail as their road cars.
The fragrance could be released in high-end department stores around the world with sculpted, papaya and carbon-fiber packaging.
Lando Norris is currently tied up as a spokesman for Ralph Lauren’s Polo Red, which seems like a missed opportunity as he would be perfect pitchman for this hypothetical project.
Nevertheless, in principle Norris’s commitment shouldn’t get in the way of this new, team-branded scent, which presents multiple positive outcomes.
Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri - or any other future McLaren driver for that matter - not being available to pitch something like this isn’t a dealbreaker, and may not even be desirable. If the point of such a project is to bring in revenue for the team, not tying the product to the image of one driver but rather the whole McLaren organization makes the undertaking less risky.
Also, margins on fragrance are among the highest in the luxury sector, and on a more strategic level, this kind of collaboration reinforces the halo effect of the McLaren brand while creating a profitable licensing stream entirely separate from sponsorships.
Williams - Racing themed children’s cartoon
If McLaren represents luxury, Williams could represent approachability and ingenuity. One way to build that identity for the next generation of fans is through an animated series inspired by the spirit of the paddock, if not its exact likeness.
Picture a show following a group of young mechanics and engineers, fictional characters in the Williams and racing universe who embark on adventures, solve problems, and discover teamwork through racing.
It avoids infringing on Concorde-agreement boundaries because it never depicts specific F1 assets or driver likenesses, yet it channels the thrill and imagination of motorsport.
A successful series would do more than entertain. It would:
Build a pipeline of future fans and engineers, irrespective of gender
Create constant, family-friendly visibility for Williams between race weekends
Generate significant opportunities for owned IP similar to other well-loved properties such as The Transformers, The Power Rangers, and Paw Patrol to name just a few; the potential for action figures, clothing and video games among so many other examples is vast.
The common thread: Independence scales
From local karting outfits to Formula 1 giants, the path to independence looks different but the logic is the same: every team, regardless of size, can move up the Vaucher Analytics Relevance Pyramid by creating owned assets that work for them even when sponsors don’t pick up the phone.
For smaller teams, that might mean hustling to secure buzz-worthy creative partnerships, and for the elite tier it’s about shaping culture itself.
The execution of these ideas is another matter, but the more teams build their own IP, the less time they’ll spend chasing sponsorship deals, and the more resilient motorsport becomes overall.
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