Ferrari Mission Winnow logo, Circuit de Catalunya, 2019

Ferrari changing F1 team name back to Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow

2019 F1 season

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Ferrari has requested another change to its official team name ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, reinstating Philip Morris International’s Mission Winnow slogan which it removed in Australia.

The team confirmed to RaceFans it has submitted a request to the FIA for a change of names. The FIA requires seven days’ notice for such a change under F1’s sporting regulations.

An updated entry list for the 2019 F1 season is expected in time for the next round of the championship. Ferrari’s latest change of names is likely to remain in effect for at least the next three races.

The team originally entered this year’s championship under the name Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow. However it dropped ‘Mission Winnow’ from its name ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix after health and media groups in the country said they were looking into whether the title might contravene restrictions on tobacco promotion.

Ferrari’s Mission Winnow and ‘Anniversary’ liveries

Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, Circuit de Catalunya, 2019
Ferrari ran Mission Winnow logos in testing…
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Albert Park, 2019
…but removed them for the first race

Ferrari subsequently took the step of removing all references to Mission Winnow from its car, team clothing and all other signage while in Australia. However, as previously reported by RaceFans, it intended to revive the Mission Winnow branding in Bahrain.

Tobacco advertising was banned in Formula 1 in 2006. Ferrari continued to enter F1 under the title Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro from 2007 until July 2011, when it was dropped after concerns were raised over similarities between the branding used by Ferrari and PMI’s Marlboro products.

It used the name Scuderia Ferrari from then until the beginning of 2019, when it first adopted the name Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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54 comments on “Ferrari changing F1 team name back to Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow”

  1. Don’t care! Let’s stop talking about this.

    1. plus a billion

    2. X2.

      All we are doing is hyping up a cigarette corporation. I wouldn’t mind legalizing tobacco sponsorship, but I find their games annoying. Especially since they work!

      In marketing it’s all about brand recognition. Let’s not recognize their brands. Maybe use a synonym? Everyone will know exactly who you are talking about.

    3. X3 Racefans doing the marketing for the big M.

    4. It’s the biggest team, and the pinnacle of motorsport, we must talk about it.

    5. How about the FIA just outlaw “Nicotine” sponsorship instead of “Tobacco”. It would end the discussion and loophole PM is using immediately.

  2. Now they can win

    1. I wonder if the mysterious loss of speed was to avoid the podium in Melbourne?

    2. OMG. Just now I realized that Winnow is read Win Now, and not Winnow – like Winona, the actress.

    3. Hahahaha. Did McLaren follow suit? Is tomorrow ever going to be better?

  3. Ferrari say ‘buy cigarettes because they taste foul and make you die sooner, probably.’ That’s the subliminal message, right?

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      22nd March 2019, 17:41

      Scuderia Ferrari Mission Diesooner has quite a ring to it….

    2. All this tobacco talk has got this ex smoker dying for a cigarette. Mission accomplished I guess.

  4. Meanwhile, somewhere a political group is having a meeting to decide if super-caffeinated energy soft drinks are a detriment to society.

    1. @khurtwilliams Maybe, but at least inhaling the fizz from other people’s fizzy drink doesn’t make you sick!

      1. No, just makes your kids obese. phew

        1. Not the point I was making! but yeah, you’re right.

      2. Logos of fizzy drinks don’t give me the urge to drink fizzy drinks. Seeing the logos of tobacco companies doesn’t make me want to inhale cigarette smoke. Heck, standing smelling tobacco smokes makes me want to toss my lunch.

        1. @khurtwilliams I’m guessing you’re not the target audience though. People already hooked and impressionable teenagers, more likely.

        2. @khurtwilliams Don’t be naive. Marketing is a multi-million industry. It has an effect, otherwise it’d not exist. Even if we are not tempted to smoke if we see a billboard saying Marlboro, someone probably is…

        3. Makes me fancy a cigarette though! 10 years of not smoking and I still crave one when triggered. Is down to will power and personal choice. Alcohol is just as dangerous yet is accepted by society.
          P.s…I don’t work for marlboro PR. Honest.

    2. Steveetienne
      23rd March 2019, 7:43

      But perhaps you aren’t aware that the sweetener in Red Bull is called aspartame and is made from the fecal matter of genetically modified e coli bacteria and upon digestion it becomes formaldehyde and is being increasingly linked to causing cancers, most prevalent being leukaemia. Knowledge is power.

      1. Steveetienne, the tone of your post seems to be rather alarmist in nature and based more on emotional outbursts rather than peer reviewed scientific research.

        For a start, calling it “the faecal matter of genetically modified e coli bacteria” is a statement that seems to be designed to produce a misleading reaction of disgust, even though calling it “faecal matter” is basically meaningless when talking about microbes.

        Asides from that, we have been using modified e-coli bacteria for decades for industrial and medical applications – just in the field of medicine, there are dozens of types of medication, ranging from synthetic insulin for sufferers of diabetes through to antiviral medication for leukaemia patients, where the industrial production methods are entirely dependent on genetically modified e-coli bacteria to produce those compounds (just, as one random example, you could consult Production of Biopharmaceuticals in E. coli: Current Scenario and Future Perspectives by Baeshen et al, 2015 in the Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology, which lists around two dozen medications produced by modified E.coli bacteria).

        Indeed, if you find the idea of any sort of by-production from a process involving some sort of microbial process, either bacteriological or fungal, then presumably you object to the idea of consuming any food product where there has been any sort of biological process, such as fermentation. Do you happily knock back a few beers at the end of the day, despite ethanol being something excreted by yeast in much the same way that you are objecting to for aspartame?

        Equally, if you are going to make those sorts of claims, you better have something to back them up that is rather more substantial than the usual sort of paranoid websites that peddle the same debunked myths. A number of the claims in your post sound a lot like the sort of statements that were being circulated more than 20 years ago in chain e-mails that are now so notorious that they are commonly used as examples of how misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories propagate through communities by relying on overly emotional language and vague pseudoscientific terms to create a false air of authority.

        In that, whilst you finish with the rather smug “Knowledge is power” statement, what you are instead showing are the dangers of overestimating the amount of knowledge that you think that you have around a particular topic.

        1. This is a good post.

          What are your thoughts on vaping which is villified to a degree despite there being no scientfic evidence to back this up?

          1. Markp, I would say that, as a relatively new phenomenon, it is difficult at this stage to determine the potential long term health impacts of vaping and further research is required.

            On balance, the evidence that is being presented at the moment indicates that vaping is probably safer than smoking conventional tobacco products by a reasonably significant margin, though there have been studies undertaken by the NHS in the UK that have shown there may be a causal link between vaping and inflammation of the lung tissues.

            As vaping has become more popular, there have also been a number of instances of indirect harm being caused by vaping products. In recent years, there have been a rising number of incidents being hospitalised due to accidentally ingesting the liquids used in vaping – particularly amongst the young children of those who vape, as they tend to be curious about playing with some of the brightly coloured liquids used in those products.

            There have also been some instances of individuals being harmed by adulterated vaping products, some of which have been unintentional – such as by individuals selling counterfeit products – but some of which have also arisen from individuals deliberately using them to consume psychoactive substances (particularly what are called “legal highs”, which take advantage of gaps in legislation to produce psychoactive substances which are technically within the law, but can sometimes have quite significant dangerous, and occasionally fatal, side effects).

            In that respect, vaping may still have the potential to cause some longer term health issues, but right now we cannot say how those might manifest themselves.

        2. Before you ‘smugly’ respond without the data I would suggest you look at the patent filed for Aspartame which is publicly available and is now widely known to be created from the faecal matter of genetically modified E coli.
          I’m curious to see if you attempt to deny the evidence written in the patent.

          Aspartame is a dipeptide molecule produced by joining phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Aspartame itself does not occur naturally but is a manufactured substance. When aspartame is consumed, it is completely broken down by the enzymes in the digestive system (esterases and peptidases) into the two amino acids and a type of alcohol called methanol.

          The metabolic pathway is well-understood and well-documented in the scientific literature. First, the methanol from the intestinal tract goes to the liver via portal blood, where the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase converts methanol into formaldehyde.

          I await your next post with eagerness.

          1. steveetienne, that article seems to be a far greater indictment of the incompetence of the gutter press in the US more than anything else, especially with their continued insistence of using the term “faecal matter” when it has no sensible meaning at a microbial level. Since you ask the question, yes, I have read and understood the original patent document – have you done that?

            I ask because, as I noted earlier, there are also a wide range of products, such as those in the medical sector, which use exactly the same processes and for which I see no reason to be as alarmed as you are.

            Equally, yes, it is true that those are the metabolites of aspartame – but there are also dozens of different metabolic processes in the human body that produce the same by products as well. Just to pick one example, the metabolism of pectin, which is a naturally occurring protein in all plants, also produces methanol as a side product.

            As for formaldehyde, that is, similarly, a naturally occurring compound that you will find in pretty much any foodstuff, from common fruit and vegetables such as bananas, apples or cauliflowers through to fish: in fact, most fish, due to the way in which their metabolism works, have quite high concentrations of formaldehyde in their bodies (close to 300mg/kg in some species of fish).

            The levels in food, though, are only a fraction of that which is produced by the human body from normal metabolic processes involving the production and breakdown of protein and lipid compounds in the body.

            There is a near constant trace level of methanol and formaldehyde in the bloodstream from those natural metabolic processes, such that the effect of aspartame is barely distinguishable against background natural processes (the typical consumption of aspartame in food products is estimated to increase formaldehyde production in the human body by about 0.3% over natural background levels). Statistically, the breakdown of pectin from consuming a bunch of bananas would probably have a more biologically significant impact on methanol and formaldehyde levels in your body than consuming the typical amount of aspartame that occurs in the human diet.

  5. I suddenly feel a strange urge to buy lots of cigarettes and vaping equipment…

  6. From an aesthetic perspective, I preferred the look of the ’90 years’ signage, and I wish they ran with that.

  7. After years of despising the way Ferrari excessively dominated F1 by sometimes throwing number two drivers under their number one car and exploiting whatever machinations they could to make sure MS won, I had slowly come around to becoming a Ferrari supporter again. After becoming the underdog for a rather long stretch, a humbling experience for any team, especially for the most prideful one, like a breath of fresh air they rose up to challenge the now dominant Mercedes team. They brought Kimi back, signed Vettel and started having better success with their car designs. Still showing some throwback ways of their past with their driver designations was a bit more forgivable as they were coming so close to beating the once completely unbeatable Mercedes juggernaut. It was fun rooting for Ferrari once more. They made the racing interesting again.

    When Mission Winnow was first announced it was such an obvious ploy for tobacco advert subterfuge that it was utterly laughable. And yet, it continues, more blatant than ever. Why? It is all about greed, not anything to do with whatever shadowy, invisible product campaign PM purports. This emperor truly has no clothes. We can all see that.

    Enough of this shape-shifting, team name changing sham scam of a greed mongering bending over do anything for the tobacco money dog and pony show. I am embarrassed for the once proud prancing stallion. I will still cheer their drivers on, but I have no more respect for their team. One of the richest teams in F1, has sold out.

    1. Well said (written) @bullmello

    2. COTD please

    3. I wonder, how you feel about whole F1 itself, as a sport flirting with some, let’s say, questionable political regimes like in Bahrain. It seems, everyone’s morality disappears for some reason, when it comes about this.

      1. As always, Tim, there is much to love, and to dislike about Formula 1. One battle at a time, I suppose. This one particularly sticks in my craw at this time since tobacco advertising has allegedly been banned from F1 and yet they allow this thinly veiled shell game to go on right before our very eyes on a now weekly basis.

        1. Agree, @bullmello.

          Wishin’ Minnows is fishing for legitimacy by association. And McLaren has inhaled the rich smoke of hypocrisy as well.

          While I have been a big fan of both teams in the past, I wish them only minnows now.

          Either the FIA amd Liberty get tough and ban big tobacco and their cross-marketing slight of hand. Or let every team profit from the death merchant dollars and blow the budget cap before it even starts smoking.

          1. If the FIA and Liberty crack down on tobacco and vapes, they’d have to crack down on every vice. We’ll have to permanently bid adieu to the possibility of the iconic Martini stripes and the Moet-Chandon crescent and stars. Even the celebratory champagne on the podium is a marketing ploy by Carbon. If tobacco isn’t allowed, why should alcohol be allowed, and in the future, depending on the laws in countries, weed?

            What the FIA and the FIM both need is a consistent policy on sponsorship by “vice” companies. There are countries like Australia and France that ban advertising of both, and countries like the UAE that ban the advertising of only one of the two. Sporting organizations that have multiple tournaments across the world should work with these countries to develop a policy that specifies tobacco and alcohol sponsorship across the tournament and for specific rounds within countries. These companies, all said and done, are paying good money to put their names on cars and bikes being raced by iconic teams such as Ducati and Ferrari and need to know whether their sponsorship is desired or not.

          2. @sundark: Actually the FIA banned tobacco advertising in F1 in 2006 due to pressure from the EU. From the FIA website they state: “In accordance with the laws in force in many countries, the FIA irrevocably banned in 2006 all advertising for tobacco products in all its competitions. ”

            Have you read Dieter’s post on big tobacco’s big comeback?
            https://www.racefans.net/2019/02/13/how-tobacco-brands-are-returning-to-f1-by-the-back-door/

            However, Marlboro’s owner Philip Morris International, still funded the team – as it does to this day – to the tune of $100m/annum, in return gaining access to Ferrari for promotions and hospitality aimed at the tobacco trade and garage forecourt shops.

            The loophole that Todt helped Ferrari exploit was that tobbaco advertising was banned, tobacco sponsorship was not.

            F1 has always great at exploiting loopholes.

          3. @jimmi-cynic Yes, I had read that piece. That’s why I had specified that the regulators need to take a stance on sponsorships in countries that banned advertising. It is unfair to the sponsors, whether we support them personally or not, to have to remove the logos that they paid for in the opening round of the championship. The decision to remove the logos Mission Winnow and A Better Tomorrow in Australia set a precedent for other countries to demand the same thing if tobacco advertising is banned in their country. The FIA, FOM, PMI and BAT will have no option but to comply, or risk a public row with governments.

          4. @sundark: Ok, understood.

            I disagree with it being unfair to the death merchant ‘sponsors’ – they know they are skirting the around the spirit of the tobacco advertising ban – high risk, but huge marketing reward for them since 2006.

    4. BlackJackFan
      23rd March 2019, 2:16

      Hi bull mello… CotY…??
      + 1 billion… To match the other comment above… ;-)

      1. if F1 and what teams are doing is giving you a hard time, don’t watch it…..if you get your adrenaline pumping everytime that clown on Sky yells “..ITS LIGHTS OUT…”, then keep watching and enjoy….Simple.

        1. Hi Sam… if your overly simplistic and ultimately stupid response is aimed at me let me assure you no team gives me a hard time… and I have absolutely no love for any of Sky’s clowns…
          But thanks for at least trying to contribute…

          1. “….overly simplistic and ultimately stupid….”
            So sad.

            By the way, there is no “trying”….its just tic tic on my keyboard….we are not changing the world here….we are just typing silly stuff about a show on TV. You shouldn’t take this too seriously..peace.

          2. BlackJackFan
            24th March 2019, 3:50

            Hahaha… You are certainly typing “silly stuff”

  8. Of course they are! No surprises there at all. For all his blow-hard ways Todt simply doesn’t have a pair big enough!

    Now there’s a thought, perhaps he’s a eunuch..

  9. Kenny Schachat
    22nd March 2019, 19:12

    I have no objection to anyone smoking, as long as they can keep the smoke away from me. I think it’s it’s disgraceful to promote it to kids who aren’t mature enough to understand the health risks. So, why doesn’t Liberty just come down on Ferrari? More threats for them to leave F1? Call their bluff! I don’t think Ferrari has ANY intention of leaving F1. It’s their only serious publicity/advertising play world wide.

    Plus the logo on the engine cover and the rear wing are seriously fugly. Liberty should ban it just for that!

  10. What a petulant, childish company.

  11. So, they have admitted culpability by remiving the ref for the hyperwatchdog moralists in australia. they are now blatantly using the situation to not only flaunt the rules by braodcasting their ads over an international platform into countries that ban tobacco advertising but to make a show of dong it so we, the public, absolutely have no doubt and cannot miss the reason and “subliminal” reference .

    Not only clever but malicious, cobsidering the product. Lets not pretend vaping is the only target here. I think the whole name change thing was calculated and planned from the start. Now the media is all over it, and thats for free.

    We should just ignore them and boycott these articles. Fia should ban multiple mid season name changes. Not like they cant, the ban is their favourite toy.

  12. Are they gonna do the hokey kokey with their “official” name all season?

    Surely there’s gotta be some rule on this? Maybe losing entitlement to category one payments unless all 10 teams agree to the change?

    1. The other teams may wish to avail themselves of the same clause if the concept of ‘corporate’ tobacco slogans catches on. In F1 one needs to be careful what one blocks…

      1. @dieterrencken: Isn’t rule 1 in F1: ‘Never block the money’ ?

        1. Try telling that to Haas over Racing Point Col1 money…

  13. That’s an idea for Williams, just change their name to say, Mastercard Lola and change it back when the car actually works.

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