- [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. Hey guys, one more thing. We have a new sticker pack
available for pre order it is the MOPOWA BABEH sticker pack available on donut.media It's available for pre order five stickers and MOPOWA BABEH in sticker form. I'll just show you, there you go. Those are the stickers you
got MO POWA BABEH on board. That's probably my personal favorite, you know, a white one, a black one. This one's very cool. And then this looks kind of
like the more Moroso font, which I think is pretty awesome MO POWA sticker pack $12 five stickers. Pretty awesome, more fun
than you could ever imagine the MO POWA sticker
pack on the donut store. Go check it out. 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. Hey, if you're liking this video so far, be sure to hit that
subscribe button hit the bell so you never miss a video when they drop, which is every day of
the week, It's crazy. 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. Follow donut on Instagram and Twitter at donutmedia follow me at Nolanjsykes. Subscribe to donutmedia, we
put out a video every day, which is crazy. Check out these videos about Formula One are up to speed as finally you can watch them up
to speed on Formula One. Be kind. Don't steal money. See you next time.
What is it with Donut and F1?
Honestly, I always thought the Marlboro barcode was literally something you would scan with a barcode reader. I never thought about looking at the logo going real fast from right to left. Any videos from past season reviews just show the logo at a stand still to me.
This actually got me thinking, whether we like the video or not, there has definitely been some shady money in F1. It's been all over this forum the last couple days with everything going on and the conversation always circles back to where the money comes from and "why would F1 speak out about atrocities in (insert geographical location) when so much money comes from there?"
So. Serious question.
Do any of you think that the budget cap will change where the money comes from? Will it eliminate some shady sources? Will it add shady sources?
On one hand, with less money involved, it somewhat becomes less opulent, so some companies (shell corporations) may back out because it may lose some glamour.
On another hand, with less cost, it may become easier for for some to buy in and basically launder their money through F1.
But it could also change nothing about where money comes from and I'm overthinking things.
Interesting to think about and I'm genuinely curious what others think.
Is it Nolan again?
Nothing beats Bin Laden F1
Also, fuck tobacco companies. I know some people wax lyrical about them as sponsors but they are some of the most vile organisations out there.
[OPINION] Donut Media is just the „Is that a supra?“ video made into a whole youtube channel
[removed]