In a high-tech sport, static branding is so last century – dynamic advertising is coming to a Formula 1 car near you soon…
F1 cars have long been described as mobile billboards, an advertising platform which just happens to circulate at 200mph in front of a global TV audience. For six decades sponsors and teams have negotiated and argued over which spaces on a car, driver or team are best – from sidepods to engine covers, rear wing endplates to wing mirrors and all points in between.
For a sport dedicated to movement, sponsors have had to inhabit a rather static environment, one that has changed little since those early days of oil and tobacco sponsors in the 1960s.
Enter Martin Turner, founder and CEO of Seamless Digital, a Towcester-based technology company which has pioneered the use of lightweight, low-energy screens which enable sponsors and their messages to appear, disappear or change at will. It has worked with McLaren since 2022 and, after successful testing, will be used by AlphaTauri during the new season.
It’s a fascinating development if you’re into that sort of thing, which the more than 300 companies supporting F1’s 10 teams most certainly are.
“The idea is to find a way of monetising an F1 car from an engineering standpoint,” says the former Jordan GP vehicle science technician who also founded Silverstone Paint Technologies in 2008. “We’re a company made up of fans, to be honest, we want to use our capabilities to help teams not only make the cars go faster but also unlock ways to raise more money.”
Silverstone Paint Technologies has become a key supplier to 70% of the Formula 1 grid, developing lightweight paints, coatings and composite solutions to ensure teams can offer their sponsors the branding they want while keeping weight under control.
In many ways Seamless Digital was a natural next step for Turner and his team, launching into the world of MDOOH – Mobile Digital Out of Home – and applying it to F1. If you’ve seen a roadside billboard suddenly transform into a digital screen, or caught sight of the way entire buildings are now used as enormous, ever-changing screens in cities such as Las Vegas, you’ll already know how impactful it can be.
