How Gulf deal has boosted Williams’s F1 commercial strategy

Relative to the size of the actual logos of the car,  the deal received a lot of media coverage thanks to the familiarity of the brand across motorsport, and the perceived iconic status of its orange and blue colours.

At a time when so many relatively obscure tech or crypto companies are coming into F1 in order to get their names known globally, Gulf already has a level of recognition that others can only dream of. Its presence represents a major coup for the Williams commercial department.

Most of Gulf’s sporting history is tied to sportscar racing, starting with two Le Mans wins with Ford in 1968-69 and heading through the Porsche 917 era in 1970-71 – captured so effectively by Steve McQueen in his Le Mans movie. A third 24 Hours win was achieved with Mirage in 1975.

Opinion: The five best unconventional Gulf liveries in motorsport 

Gulf’s highest profile F1 involvement in the early days was with McLaren, an arrangement that ended after the arrival of Texaco with Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974. It was that heritage that brought Gulf back to F1 with McLaren in a “multi-year” deal announced in July 2020. It seemed like a perfect fit given the historical partnership and the fact that the team had returned to its 1960s-70s papaya colours. It extended to McLaren Automotive too, with Gulf becoming the preferred lubricant supplier.

At the 2021 Monaco GP, the team and sponsor attracted a huge amount of coverage by running in a full Gulf livery that harked back to the Le Mans glory days. Then in November 2022, it was announced that the partnership was to end, with a McLaren source confirming “they didn’t leave us, we left them.”

The company wasn’t finished with F1 however, and Gulf Oil International CEO Mike Jones began looking for an alternative home – not an easy task given how many teams already had clashing deals.

“We had a great partnership with McLaren, and some real highlights,” says Jones. “The Monaco livery, I guess, being at the pinnacle event. But our relationship with McLaren came to a natural end, we’d achieved everything that we probably could with the McLaren F1 team, and so we started looking in terms of what was next for us within Gulf for F1.”

Williams proved to be a suitable choice, and a deal was agreed that encompassed both the team’s Driver Academy and its Esports project in a concerted effort to appeal to a younger…