Formula 1 Cigarette Sponsors

Huge Marlboro billboard with the logo in the racetrack. Marlboro was very popular in the Formula 1 scene since sponsoring big teams such as Ferrari. 

This one may be the most iconic tobacco sponsor on Formula 1. The West McLaren team driver was Mika Hakkinen, Mika Häkkinen won the 1998 and 1999 Drivers' Championships with McLaren. He is shown here at the 1999 Canadian Grand Prix, an event which he won. 

Formula One teams have started using sponsorship liveries in 1968 by replacing the national colors with sponsors as to display the logo on a car was very important because they have realized that sponsorship plays a major role in Formula One and in all sports. For example, Ferrari has been known racing in a traditional red since forever as it represented the customary national racing color of Italy as recommended between the world war one and the war world two by the organizations that later became the FIA. That tradition red is also called Rosso Corsa which means the red international motor racing color of cars entered by teams from Italy. However, Ferrari kept their traditional red as national-patriotic basic commercial sponsor liveries unlike most other teams in Formula One.

After Renault pulled out of F1 at the end of 1986, Lotus signed a deal with Honda for use of their turbocharged 1.5-litre engine. Due to Honda's existing deal with Williams which allowed that team exclusive use of the 1987-spec RA167-E unit, Lotus instead used the previous season's RA166-E. As part of the deal, Lotus agreed to sign Honda's test driver Satoru Nakajima as teammate to Ayrton Senna. Still, it’s sobering to realize that this year will mark 30 years since Ayrton Senna’s Lotus 99T-Honda, complete with the active suspension system, crossed the line first at both Monaco and Detroit to score Team Lotus’s final grand prix victories. It’s always struck me as tragic that Chapman didn’t live to see his team running the fastest driver of his era in the most complex F1 car of the period. We can be certain he’d have approved. 

The BAR 01 was the car with which the British American Racing Formula One team used to compete in the 1999 Formula One season, its inaugural year in the series after purchasing Tyrrell. It was driven by Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 Champion who had left Williams in order to work with Team Principal Craig Pollock, his manager, and a good friend. The second driver was Ricardo Zonta, the 1997 Formula 3000 champion and 1998 FIA GT champion, although Mika Salo would deputize early in the season after the Brazilian injured his ankle at Interlagos. 

Jacques Villeneuve's car was to display Lucky Strike branding and Ricardo Zonta's car to have 555 brandings.