F1 cigarette sponsors left the cars between 2005 and 2007. In Europe, Directive 2003/33/EC banned tobacco sponsorship of events involving several EU countries, such as Grands Prix, from 31 July 2005; almost every team ended its contracts by the end of 2006, and in 2007 only Ferrari remained with Marlboro, shown openly for the last time at the Chinese Grand Prix. The link between tobacco and Formula 1 did not end there, though: it has changed its name several times.

For almost forty years, since the first cigarette sponsor in 1968, tobacco was the financial heart of Formula 1. It painted the most famous cars in history, paid for salaries and wind tunnels, and when it had to leave it forced the sport to reinvent its sponsorship model. It is worth retracing how it happened, also because the same game is being played today with other sensitive categories.

The golden years: when F1 cars wore cigarette colours

Marlboro stayed with McLaren for twenty-three years, from 1974 to 1996, and then became Ferrari’s title sponsor from 1997. Around that axis moved Camel, Rothmans, John Player Special, West, Mild Seven, Benson & Hedges, Lucky Strike and Gauloises. Each had its signature car: the black and gold John Player Special Lotus and then the yellow Camel Lotus of a young Ayrton Senna, the red and white Marlboro McLaren of his titles, the blue Mild Seven Benetton of Michael Schumacher.

It was an era when the cigarette brand was not just a logo on the sidepod: it was the livery, the team name, the visual identity fans still remember today. And sometimes it was also a bold marketing experiment, like the 1999 BAR, which wanted two different liveries for its two cars, Lucky Strike for Jacques Villeneuve and 555 for Ricardo Zonta. The FIA required both cars to be identical, and the team answered with a livery split down the middle, Lucky Strike on one side and 555 on the other, joined by a zip painted on the nose.

The road to the ban

The first major European law, Directive 98/43/EC, imposed a general ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship, but on 5 October 2000 the Court of Justice of the European Communities annulled it following a challenge by Germany. Europe started again with a more targeted text, Directive 2003/33/EC, which bans cross-border tobacco advertising and sponsorship in print, on radio, online and at events involving several EU countries, a category that, as the European Commission points out, includes Formula 1 Grands Prix. Television was already covered by a 1989 directive.

Member States had to apply it by 31 July 2005. The FIA tried to defend the deadline set by the annulled directive, 1 October 2006, even threatening legal action, because it feared the Grands Prix would leave Europe. In the end the real timeline was this: in 2005 the European ban came into force, almost every team ended its tobacco contracts by the end of 2006, and in 2007 only one team on the grid still had a cigarette sponsor.

Tobacco-free Grands Prix and imaginative liveries

Before the ban became European, some countries had already introduced it on their own, and at those races teams had to run without the brand. Some of the most entertaining liveries in history were born that way. Jordan turned Benson & Hedges into «Bitten & Hisses» in 1997, «Buzzin’ Hornets» from 1998 to 2000 and «Bitten Heroes» in 2001, with noses decorated as snakes, hornets and sharks. McLaren covered the West lettering with a double-star logo in 1997, and in 1999 and 2000, at some tobacco-free Grands Prix, replaced it with its drivers’ names: «Mika» on Häkkinen’s car and «David» on Coulthard’s.

MotoGP went through the same season. On Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha, at Grands Prix where tobacco could not be shown, the Gauloises lettering became a huge «GO!!». Then came the Camel Yamaha seasons, in 2006 and 2007; we tell the commercial story of the championship on our page about MotoGP sponsorship.

Ferrari and Marlboro: the last to leave

In 2007 Ferrari was the only team with a tobacco sponsor. For most of the season the Marlboro name did not appear: in its place was a red and white barcode, while the real logos were only seen in Bahrain, Monaco and China. The 2007 Chinese Grand Prix was the last time a Formula 1 car openly displayed a cigarette brand.

The barcode stayed on the Ferraris until 2010, when the team removed it from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards after accusations of subliminal advertising. From 2018 Philip Morris returned to the car with Mission Winnow, a communication initiative about the company’s transformation towards a smoke-free future: in 2019 Ferrari removed the brand at the Australian Grand Prix after the local health authorities opened an investigation, and the title sponsorship deal, estimated by the press at around 125 million euros a year, expired at the end of 2021. Today Ferrari races with HP as title sponsor, a story we tell in our article on Ferrari and HP.

Philip Morris, however, never left Maranello. It stayed on as a team partner, renewed a relationship that has lasted more than fifty years in December 2025, has shown its ZYN nicotine pouch brand on the car at selected races since the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and since 1 January 2026 has been a Premium Partner of Scuderia Ferrari HP.

Tobacco today: from cigarettes to nicotine

Tobacco has not disappeared from Formula 1, it has changed product, and today it sits on two of the championship’s most famous teams. Alongside Ferrari with ZYN, since 2019 McLaren has partnered with British American Tobacco, which brought to the car first its «A Better Tomorrow» platform and then smokeless brands such as Vuse and Velo nicotine pouches; in 2024 the deal was extended for several years, and between late 2025 and 2026 Velo has been at the centre of airport duty-free campaigns, where regulations permit. This is exactly the point regulators and health groups argue about: whether a nicotine brand counts as tobacco advertising or not.

For a brand considering Formula 1 today, the lesson is twofold. First, sensitive categories do not disappear, they move: after tobacco came alcohol, with country-by-country rules we explain in our guide to F1 alcohol sponsors. Second, the gap left by cigarettes was filled by new sectors, from telecoms to energy, from finance to technology, which changed the very way sponsorship works: a shift we described in the four eras of motorsport sponsorship. To understand how to enter the championship today, the starting point is our page on Formula 1 sponsorship.