From Game to Operating System: Why the Cosworth–iRacing Partnership Could Redefine Motorsport by 2030
On August 28, 2025, iRacing announced a landmark partnership with Cosworth, the legendary engineering firm producing everything from engines to steering wheels to, pertinently for this announcement, software.
At first glance, this might sound like a “nice upgrade” for sim racers who want to feel a little closer to the action: Cosworth’s Pi Toolbox, highly regarded in professional race telemetry, will be made available to all iRacing users.
Cosworth is no stranger to the sim racing space, having already released consumer versions of some of their highly recognizable, real-life steering wheels.
But this news is far bigger than just new features for a PC sim.
Motorsport Merch Is Lazy, And It's Costing Teams Millions
Motorsport, from Formula 1 on down, is unabashedly capitalist, in its operations, its scope, and its sheer spectacle.
At every race, the money is on display in every second of coverage. The scale may vary, but only from “kind of expensive” to “ludicrously expensive.”
Merchandise sits comfortably within that ecosystem. It’s not just a revenue stream, it’s capitalism in pure form: the sublimation of self through consumption.
For fans looking for connection, merch is the perfect outlet: an easy, visible way to say this is who I ride with.
So if the emotional buy-in is this strong, the question becomes obvious:
Why are teams still neglecting that loyalty with lazy, uninspired merch?
The Hidden Cost of F1 Sponsorship: How Delivery Strain Threatens Performance and Profitability
Hidden costs in sponsorship delivery don’t just erode margins, they create a compounding financial trap for F1 teams.
Here’s how it plays out:
Imagine a $50 million Title or Principal sponsorship.
Poorly controlled activations, inflated logistics, or unmanaged resource drain quietly strip away 5% of the deal's value, that’s $2.5 million in lost contribution margin (over what could reasonably be expected to delight your client)
To plug that gap, what do teams teams have to do?
Chase more sponsorship revenue!
But here’s the problem:
Every new sponsor introduces its own obligations: more events, appearances, travel, and content production
More partners = more complexity, more operational overhead, more strain on personnel and performance
Those costs compress margins again, repeating the cycle
From Tobacco to Crypto: The Search for the Next Lucrative Vice Motorsport Sponsor
Tobacco use is widely recognized as a lethal habit and has for all intents and purposes disappeared from the visible marketing landscape.
You’d be hard pressed to remember the last time you saw a tobacco brand anywhere but behind a store counter, yet racing fans will know it wasn’t always this way.
As destructive as the tobacco industry was and continues to be, there is no denying just how mightily their involvement shaped motorsports. Obviously we can talk about liveries which have since become iconic, and it’s shocking just how many names from a certain era are actually tobacco-related.
Marlboro, Gitanes, John Player Special, Silk Cut.
All tobacco brands, and that’s only a handful of examples!
Why did tobacco companies invest so heavily in motorsports?
They did so because the return on investment they received allowed them to quite literally engineer several eras of motorsports.
Tobacco companies also defined the modern era of racing sponsorship, and they did so for reasons that still form the bedrock of why any brand enters the sport today.