McLaren, suffice it to say, has had some trouble holding down major sponsors lately. It recently lost both TAG Heuer and Mobil to Red Bull, and now reports are indicating that its longtime sponsor Johnnie Walker has signed on with Force India.
According to Autosport, the scotch whisky brand will appear on the livery of the Indian team’s cars starting next year as part of a multi-year deal. That may not mean, however, that Johnnie will be walking away from McLaren altogether. The two British brands recently signed a renewal of their sponsorship deal, however the scotch brand is expected to feature more prominently on the Force India cars than on McLaren’s.
Johnnie Walker has been steadily ramping up its sponsorship activities in F1. It has been with McLaren since 2005, and signed on as the official whisky of Formula One in 2014.
Meanwhile, Force India is no stranger to sponsorship from distilleries and whisky brands, including Dalmore, Whyte & Mackay, Royal Challenge, Vladivar Vodka, and Smirnoff. Like Johnnie Walker, those all fall under the umbrella of Diageo, the world’s largest alcohol manufacturer. Putting the Johnnie Walker logo on the Force India cars, then, may be a simple matter of Diageo swapping one of its properties for another.
Still, that can’t be exciting news for McLaren, whose new executive director Zak Brown has been hard at work trying to secure a new title sponsor. The two teams share a technical partnership by which McLaren would advise Force India and provide it with the benefit of its technical expertise. But Force India has outperformed McLaren the past two seasons.
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