- [Nalonj Syke] Like everybody else
I was looking forward to the 2020 Formula One season,
but since that got postponed for some reason,
I started watching old races and realized something
a lot of these companies sponsoring these cars
don't exist anymore.
shady money has been a part of formula One DNA
for a long time
and with 490 million people watching
there's no question why shady companies
wanna get their name on the side of a race car?
What the heck are these companies do?
Are they real?
Where do they get their money?
In this episode, we're gonna look at some of the sketchiest
literally unbelievable companies
that have a stake in Formula One racing and don't worry,
there is a Nigerian prince involved with one of them.
It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
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The cost of racing is insane.
Formula One teams require hundreds of millions of dollars
in order to compete every season.
The amount of funding
a team can secure directly correlates
to how much a team wins.
That's just how F1 works.
It's the way most sports work frankly,
more money, better engines, better drivers, Papa John's
just baseball, the governing body of F1
the FIA or Federation Internationale d'Automotive
very stringently regulates car technology
to maintain as much of an even playing field
on the track as possible,
but they historically haven't done much
to balance the money side out
kind of like how small market teams in America
don't get as big a budget as the big market teams
like the Yankees versus the Orioles
or the Lakers versus the Kings
Formula One will have a budget cap
for the first time starting in 2021.
But historically speaking,
there's always been a big gap
in the budgets between the highest
earning teams and the lowest.
Case in point Mercedes PETRONAS spent the most in 2019,
with $484 million dollars,
which is almost three times as much as the Williams team
spent in the same timeframe.
This was less than their previous year's budget
of $150 million because Williams lost their title sponsor,
Martini and Rossi, a company that produces vermouth,
a sweet liquor made from wine
side note, their stuff is actually pretty cheap
thought for sure that a company sponsoring F1 team
would have some really luxurious stuff,
but it's like 850 a bottle.
Anyway, Williams still has to compete with Mercedes
despite the fact that they're working
with $350 million dollars less than Mercedes
suffice to say a sponsor dropped out can cripple
or even doom teams,
which is why sometimes F1 teams
end up with less than reputable backers.
One recent example that Formula One fans will remember
is the rich energy fiasco from last year,
the only American owned team in Formula One right now
is Haas and they fell victim to the shady a sponsorship
situation of 2019
rich energy a slick new energy drink with antlers for logo
became the title sponsor of the Haas team.
It turned out that another F1 team
the Force India team dismissed rich energy
for lacking substance
before they went with Canadian billionaire
Lawrence stroll's money
then Williams was actually about to ink a deal
with rich energy but they didn't show up.
Supposedly Williams story rich energy CEO
and roadie for Imagine Dragons
set up a meeting with Williams
but never made it to said meeting.
Then a few days passed and the news comes out that he signed
with Haas that should have been a red flag for Haas
but there's actually a third red flag
the fact that there was no product
at a certain point in the 2019 season people on F1 forums
and Reddit realized that they had never seen a can
of rich energy in real life
when grilled about the legitimacy of his company
story further confused everybody when he told motorsport.com
that when people say that rich energy doesn't exist,
that's like, quote saying men never walked on the moon,
or that Elvis is still alive.
Dude, there are easier ways of telling people
that you have a product and your company is a real company.
Okay, there just are.
Then someone dug up financial statements
from the company that showed their bank account
had 581 British pounds or $770 total.
Maybe the weirdest part of this story happened
on July 10 of 2019.
When story went rogue and tweeted out quote,
today, rich energy terminated our contract with Haas F1
for poor performance.
I guess you can't get fired if you quit.
This was news not only to Haas but everyone at rich energy
they tried to force story out of the company
calling his actions the result of the quote
rogue individual, it was a whole thing.
Rich energy never held up their side of the deal,
probably because they had $700 in their account
and Haas got screwed in the end
having to finish out the season with one less sponsor.
Rich energy was then taken to court over the Antler logo
when they were forced to pay Whyte bikes $30,000 in damage,
which they never got.
Williams story was eventually pushed out of the company,
and they rebranded as Lightning Volt.
But this actually wasn't the first energy drink debacle
in Formula One in the 1999 season,
a mysterious prince from Nigeria and a fake energy drink
led to an F1 team going bankrupt.
You can't make this up.
The 53rd season of Formula One started in 1999.
Mika Hakkinen was defending his world championship title
with the McLaren team.
Michael Schumacher was recovering from a broken leg
and the arrows team was trying to figure out their finances.
And to prince Malik Ado Ibrahim
Prince Malik offered the arrows $125 million dollars
to be a sponsor for a team that was as strapped for cash
as arrows $125 mil could completely turn their luck around.
So team manager Tom Walkinshaw
agreed to let the print bankroll arrows the 99 season
delivery that year was shared with Repsol.
So the car was painted in half Repsol orange
and the rear half painted black with a T minus logo.
It's a very unique look.
I'll give him that, prince Malik could always be seen
in the paddock with cameras surrounding him.
He ate up the attention and didn't miss a chance
to promote his brand T minus
what's T minus you ask?
Well, it was supposed to be an energy drink.
It was supposed to be a motorcycle brand.
It was supposed to be a lot of things,
but it never ended up being much of anything at all.
The plan was to debut the company in Formula One
then sell rebranded products like energy drinks,
motorcycles, and bicycles under the T minus badge.
They even planned on rebranding Lamborghini's
under the T minus logo.
Hey, you want to see my T minus Lamborghini?
No. (laughing loudly)
No, T minus was actually the third energy drink
that sponsored arrow in four years,
the others being Hype energy drink
and Power Horse which we somehow don't own the copyright to.
Although T minus did manufacture some energy drinks,
they didn't make any money and by the end of the 99 season,
prince Malik was nowhere to be found.
When he was called upon to buy the rest of his shares.
No one could get in touch with him,
and his shares ended up being bought by an investment firm.
Morgan Grunfeld who sued arrows in return,
the arrows team had fallen prey
to a real life Nigerian prince scheme.
And unfortunately, the loss of this funding in other words
led to the team shutting down in 2002.
So what happened to prince Malik?
Well, he popped up again a few years later
to sponsor a NASCAR driver, but more on that later.
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One of the T minus logos this mirrored one
reminded me of a more recent mirrored logo.
The Mission Winnow on Ferrari's current car.
I actually think it looks pretty sick.
But what the heck is Mission Winnow.
Winnowing is the process of removing the straw
from the grain during the milling process.
Mission Winnow has nothing to do with flour mills,
when you go to their website, there isn't much information,
not any useful information anyway,
it's full of vague business terms
and it almost feels like a parody of a corporation.
Just listen to this quote,
innovating and investing in an open dialogue,
bringing people and businesses closer together
creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem.
Their Twitter sounds like a bot was programmed
to jam as many corporate buzzwords
into one sentence as possible.
A little further digging and I found out that Mission Winnow
is pretty much a shell company for Philip Morris
international or PMI.
You know, the people that own Marlboro cigarettes.
Philip Morris has been in Formula One for decades.
So why is it Mission Winnow and not Marlboro
in 2006 the FiA banned tobacco sponsorships in Formula One,
but since Mission Winnow is a new initiative
that's not pushing tobacco products or any products at all.
They're allowed to sponsor a car despite being owned
by a tobacco company.
Technically speaking, it's a CSR
or Corporate Social Responsibility.
In layman's terms Mission Winnow encompasses activities
that are meant to improve the public standing
of a corporation by portraying it
as a responsible member of society.
Basically, its PR
this wasn't the first time that Philip Morris
got SSX tricky with it though.
F1 fans might remember the barcode logo on the Ferrari car
from a decade ago, that was Marlboro's attempt
at being subversive but watchdog groups quickly caught on
at a standstill it seemed like nothing more
than vertical lines, but at high speed
the barcode resembled the Marlboro Chevron,
the mission when a logo
is actually just the Marlboro Chevron on its side,
it's the same dimensions, same shapes everything.
It's a way for Marlboro to stay in Formula One
without actually being involved,
guys, it's a loophole,
a loophole that the World Health Organization
is looking to close very soon.
Last year at the Australian Grand Prix,
Ferrari was forced to remove the Mission Winnow logo
from the wing because of Australia's
strict tobacco advertising laws.
It wasn't just Australia either.
Scuderia Ferrari was forced to remove Mission Winnow
advertising for 11 of the 21 races of 2019.
It looks like their advertising strategies spun out.
It might be a sign of what's to come though
Ferrari isn't the only team with a tobacco sponsor.
McLaren is sponsored by a better tomorrow,
which is owned by British American Tobacco.
McLaren also had to remove their advertising
ahead of the Australian Grand Prix as well.
It's sleazy, but in a way, it's pretty brilliant.
What Philip Morris is doing with Mission Winnow
its Guerilla advertising, it gets people talking.
I mean, how, I'm making a video about it right now.
They won, clearly.
Philip Morris puts this huge,
intriguing logo on their car
that has nothing to do with cigarettes.
People find out about it, they get up in arms about it.
And Philip Morris gets free advertising
because humans are inherently curious.
I mean, again, I'm talking about it right now.
It's like when Radiohead put out in rainbows
and years later, someone realized that it fit exactly
with a computer and everything was based off zeros and ones
its exactly like that.
During the Austrian Grand Prix of 2018,
viewers were puzzled by the eyetime banners
and advertisements.
eyetime was the title sponsor of the event,
but no one had ever heard of this company before.
at this conference, the CEO Maglena Krumova
describes the all in one eyetime app
as world changing social and up to date,
because that's what sells me on an app if it's up to date.
So what the hell is eyetime then?
Well, it was a messaging app much like WhatsApp,
but really, I time was an MLM
or Multi-Level Marketing scheme,
also known as a pyramid scheme.
And apparently, they're still active
and what they actually do is still a mystery.
Krumova actually started other pyramid schemes
under names Lyoness and my world,
which also sponsored at one for a bit,
and Lyoness was actually banned
from doing business in Norway.
If you can't do business in Norway.
I don't want to buy your product.
There's Norway I'm gonna buy yourself stuff.
If there's one type of person that Formula One attracts.
It's old guys with a lot of money.
That's probably why one of the sponsors of the 2018
Singapore Grand Prix was Sugarbook,
a dating app that matched younger sugar babies
with older rich men.
Although they never sponsored a car Sugarbook
was set to co sponsor a party at a bar hosted
by Williams title sponsor Martini,
that party would have been pretty gross
had it not been canceled,
probably because it would have been a PR nightmare
for Martini, and probably Williams as well.
Look, I'm just a schmuck,
but this is as good a time as any to bring up ethics in F1.
For a billion dollar multinational corporation,
Formula One gets away
with a lot of less than perfect behavior.
It exists in this weird dichotomy, okay?
On one hand, it's a world class sport.
Second in popularity, only to football but on the other end,
you have really sleazy sponsorships cutthroat behavior
and sometimes a disregard for human rights,
and unfortunately it's been like that for a long, long time.
This might be a little heavy
and a little controversial but when the governing body
of a sport is sometimes morally bankrupt,
a shady sponsor doesn't seem like the end of the world
and that's probably why Formula One attracts
so many of them.
Anytime you have an organization worth billions
there's gonna be some shadiness if you dig deep enough,
so whatever happened to prince Malik
after he goes to the arrows team in 1999.
Well, he popped up again in the US in 2005.
This time to sponsor NASCAR Busch series driver,
Robert Richardson, Jr.
Allegedly Prince Malik stole $750,000 from Richardson's dad,
and even though he was acquitted prince Malik
was jailed in Texas for perjuring himself.
These days, he's back in Nigeria
and nowhere near the racing scene.
Keep the hustle up dude.
Don't do don't steal money.
Look I love Formula One.
I'm still gonna follow it.
If it comes back to season hopefully, it will.
I just think when you have so much money involved
in one thing and the world's attention,
there's ultimately gonna be some shady sponsors.
Hopefully I'm not on any Formula One blacklist.
Hopefully I could get invited to something soon.
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Be kind.
Don't steal money.
See you next time.