Top Gear's Top 9: motorsport marketing fails

At the 2004 Monaco GP, Jaguar Racing ran a special livery to promote the film Ocean’s Twelve. It placed a $300k diamond into both cars’ nose cones. When one R5 crashed into the barrier on the very first lap, the diamond was nowhere to be found...

In 2011, Lewis Hamilton took part in a promotional ‘seat swap’ with NASCAR winner Tony Stewart. Stewart went out to set the car up, before Lewis jumped in and started beating his times despite having never driven a NASCAR cup car. Whoops.

In 2009 at Ferrari’s World Finals in Valencia, then-company chairman Luca di Montezemolo beached a California convertible in a gravel trap. Even worse, F1 drivers Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso were perched on the back.

For 2019, Haas unveiled a black ’n’ gold VF-19 sponsored by energy drink manufacturer Rich Energy. Rich Energy boss William Storey claimed his company would beat Red Bull “on and off the track”. The partnership lasted less than 10 races.

Having one of your road cars as the official safety car should be a top marketing move, but when the Vantage did it back in 2022 a number of drivers noted it was too slow for them to keep their tyres warm, with Verstappen comparing it to a turtle.

Ford’s 1966 Le Mans win certainly wasn’t a PR disaster, but the three-car photo it engineered cost Ken Miles and Denny Hulme victory. When all three GT40s crossed the line, it was decided the #2 car had won the race because it started 8m further back on the grid.

In 2014, Nissan said it would return to top tier endurance racing with a radical hybrid LMP1 car. However, said car missed the first two races of the WEC season and was so slow at Le Mans it was withdrawn from all future races.

In 2024, Mahindra Racing received massive criticism for using AI to create a fake female ‘ambassador’ for its Formula E team on Instagram. Clearly hiring an actual woman in motorsport was too tricky an idea for the team to get its head around.

Not only were the 1981 and 1982 Caesars Palace GPs poor marketing moves for F1 (the races were held in the hotel car park), they were also poor for the hotel. Attendances were low and Caesars Palace made massive losses both years.