McLaren Racing and Aston Martin F1 have each signed separate commercial agreements with Unilever's Dirt Is Good brand, the laundry detergent platform that markets under OMO, Persil, and Skip badges depending on geography. Both deals include race-weekend branding and integrated partnerships with each team's F1 Academy entry, the all-female junior series now completing its second season.
McLaren announced the arrangement first, positioning Dirt Is Good as what it called a "Global Official Partner" with visible placement across the team's papaya livery during select grand prix weekends. Aston Martin followed within hours, disclosing its own multi-year agreement that grants Dirt Is Good presence on the AMR24 chassis and driver fireproofs. Neither team disclosed deal value, but comparable mid-tier F1 partnerships in the $8-12 million annual range typically secure this level of activation—logo placement on the car's sidepod or rear wing endplate, plus hospitality access for 40-60 guests per race weekend. Unilever is effectively writing two checks to achieve redundancy in a single paddock.
The structure reflects how consumer packaged goods companies now approach Formula 1: not as a single team bet but as a category play. Dirt Is Good's core message—"let kids get messy"—maps cleanly onto motorsport's grit-and-grease aesthetic, but the brand's actual target is mothers aged 28-45 in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Southern Europe, markets where F1's broadcast reach has grown 30% since 2019 according to Nielsen. By splitting investment across McLaren and Aston Martin, Unilever hedges against on-track performance variance while doubling its inventory of social content, track signage, and co-branded digital campaigns. It also buys access to two distinct F1 Academy rosters, each fielding drivers who generate their own influencer reach. McLaren's academy driver Bianca Bustamante carries 780,000 Instagram followers; Aston Martin's Mia Sharizman has a smaller but highly engaged base in Malaysia, a priority detergent market.
What matters here is the normalization of dual-team sponsorships in F1, a structure that was functionally unthinkable before Liberty Media's 2017 acquisition loosened the sport's traditional exclusivity zones. Red Bull and Oracle, Williams and Duracell, Haas and MoneyGram—brands increasingly treat F1 teams as media inventory rather than monogamous partnerships. For team principals, this is favorable: it lifts category price floors and reduces dependency on any single sponsor's renewal cycle. For sponsors, it creates efficiency at scale but dilutes brand differentiation. A Unilever executive will now watch both McLaren and Aston Martin pit stops and call both "our team" in internal reports.
The F1 Academy component adds structural logic. The junior series, launched in 2023 with $150,000 per-season budgets funded by F1 itself, gives sponsors a second content stream with lower activation costs and higher purpose-marketing velocity. Dirt Is Good can now film behind-the-scenes features with young female drivers in both garages, distribute that content across Unilever's owned channels in 14 languages, and satisfy internal ESG reporting requirements tied to women's sports investment. The Academy races on F1 support-card weekends, meaning Unilever's logo appears on-screen during Friday practice sessions when TV rates are cheaper but paddock presence is identical.
Watch for two things. First, whether Dirt Is Good secures title sponsorship of a specific F1 Academy round, likely the Miami or São Paulo weekend where Unilever has existing retail partnerships and can justify experiential budgets. Second, how McLaren and Aston Martin price their remaining inventory—both teams are still offering primary sidepod real estate for 2025, and any deal that closes above $20 million will reset the market for non-title partnerships. Unilever's willingness to pay twice suggests other CPG brands—Procter & Gamble, Reckitt, Henkel—are now modeling similar split strategies.
The detergent company that tells children to play in the mud just decided two F1 teams are better than one. The teams cashed identical checks and kept looking for the next logo.
The takeaway
Unilever's dual-team F1 deal normalizes split sponsorships, lifting category pricing while signaling CPG brands now treat teams as media buys, not exclusive partners.
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