Matt Bishop: 'It was the biggest F1 launch in history. Then it all went wrong'

This evening all 10 teams and all 20 drivers will descend on London’s O2 Arena to stage and star in Formula 1’s first ever communal new car launch. They will be joined by comedian Jack Whitehall, country music singer Kane Brown, rapper Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly, or mgk, all lower-case please), composer Brian Tyler and his Are We Dreaming audio-video creation, and the ageing boy band Take That. Tartars for factual accuracy will doubtless insist that we refer to it as a new livery launch, not a new car launch, since most teams will not be displaying their brand-new 2025-model-year designs but will instead wheel out old cars, or even old show cars, freshly repainted. That ruse has been commonplace in F1 for some years, in fact, and time was when F1 teams took a ‘least said, soonest mended’ approach to such casual subterfuge, but this year the marketers at Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber have been particularly overt about it, announcing that the show car they will display at the O2 has been made by Memento Exclusives, a vendor of F1 memorabilia, and that it will be auctioned off afterwards by F1 Authentics, which is a subsidiary of Memento Exclusives. Indeed, bidding has already begun.

Or, to put it another way, when is a new F1 car launch not a new F1 car launch? Answer: when it’s a new F1 car launch.

Back in the day, things were less confusing – and less commercial. In 1976, for example, the ‘launch’ of the new Ensign N176 was ‘staged’ at the team’s little workshop in the former coal-mining town of Burntwood, Staffordshire. Present were three people: the team boss, Mo Nunn; the driver, Chris Amon; and the journalist, Nigel Roebuck, who was then an Autosport correspondent, would go on to become editor-in-chief of Motor Sport between 2007 and 2016, and, now 78, remains a dear friend of mine. Roebuck tells the story very well, far better than I can, but the gist of it is that Nunn appeared wearing a jacket bearing the logos of a previous sponsor, Duckhams, despite the fact that the team’s principal backer was now Valvoline. As Nigel shaped to take a Kodak Instamatic snap of boss, driver, and car, he suggested that Mo remove the garment promoting one of his current sponsor’s main commercial rivals. “Do you think they’d mind?” Mo replied. Before Nigel could answer, the phone rang. It was Mo’s wife, Sylvia, asking him to buy a packet of frozen peas on his way home. This evening I doubt that Oracle Red Bull Racing chief executive officer Christian Horner will wander into the O2 wearing an old Microsoft-branded jacket, or that his media appearances will be interrupted by Geri Halliwell calling to ask him to buy groceries.

For many years McLaren led the way when it came to new F1 car launches, and two of the most memorable such Macca shindigs occurred in 1997 and 2007. I attended both.

In 1997, having been sponsored by Philip Morris for many years, their cars bearing the iconic red and white livery of Philip Morris’s Marlboro cigarette brand, McLaren would henceforth be sponsored instead by Reemtsma, a German subsidiary of the British tobacco giant Imperial, and the cigarette brand whose logos would adorn that year’s svelte McLaren MP4/12 was West, resplendent in silver, which suited the team’s engine partner Mercedes-Benz perfectly. Oh and here is an interesting tidbit. The paint used by Mercedes-Benz for its silver road cars was too heavy for McLaren, so a lighter paint made by Volvo was applied instead, but I do not remember that fact being highlighted in any 1997 Mercedes-Benz press release!

McLaren boss Ron Dennis wanted to make a big fuss of his new title sponsor, so he hired out London’s Alexandra Palace and invited not only his drivers, Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard, but also Jamiroquai, the Spice Girls, and 4500 fans. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, especially Posh, Scary, Sporty, Baby, and Ginger (yes, Geri Halliwell, who is making a second appearance in my Motor Sport column this week), who were reputedly compensated to the tune of £100,000 and a Mercedes-Benz SL. Each. I do not think Jay Kay did quite so well.

As I watched, I glanced to my left – and I saw 91-year-old Manfred von Brauchitsch, in suit and tie, a guest of Mercedes-Benz, for which company he had raced Silver Arrows grand prix cars before World War Two. To this day I have never seen a face that radiated such sheer bemusement. His body language, too, was discordant with the party vibe, for, as Jamiroquai and the Spice Girls sang their songs and strutted their stuff on stage, the old racer stood to attention, stock-still, allowing himself neither a sway nor even a foot tap, which was impressive for a man in his 10th decade but bespoke little enthusiasm for the sounds that were assailing him. Or perhaps he was now deaf, and maybe temporarily grateful for that deafness, his hearing having been lost to the roar of the big supercharged straight-eight engines whose horsepower he had deployed to victorious effect at Monaco and Reims six decades before.

One decade later, in 2007, by which time I was still a full-time magazine editor and had got to know Ron Dennis very well — indeed he would soon invite me to become McLaren’s comms/PR chief for 2008 — I initially refused the team’s invitation to its new F1 car launch, having nominated one of my journalists to attend it in my place. A few days before the event, having just perused the guest list, Ron called me and, without introduction or preamble, demanded, “Why do you never come to my events?”

“I do,” I protested.

“No, you usually send one of your journalists instead. Why aren’t you coming to my Valencia launch? It’s going to be mega.”

In the end he persuaded me, and I flew to and from Valencia with him on his private jet, and I am glad I did, for his Valencia spectacular was even bigger and glitzier than his Ally Pally do had been 10 years before. The centre of the city had been closed to traffic, and the roads were thronged with 250,000 F1-crazy Spaniards, all of them mad-keen to see McLaren’s new recruit, their hero Fernando Alonso, who had won the F1 drivers’ world championship for Renault in both 2005 and 2006. Alonso’s team-mate would be a baby-faced British rookie named Lewis Hamilton, but he was very much the support act to the Spanish superstar.

They seemed to get on quite well, I thought when I took my turn to interview them, and they answered my questions politely and attentively. After they had completed their media duties, the showbiz side of things commenced. First they were paraded in open-top Mercedes-Benz road cars, then they demo-drove their new McLaren MP4-22 F1 cars, Alonso leading the way just ahead of Hamilton. After that, at the behest of the team’s new title sponsor Vodafone, they took photographs of each other on their mobile phones – an avant-garde PR stunt for the time. Finally, there was a huge party, at which the circus and dance troupe Cirque du Soleil and pop violinist Vanessa-Mae performed. I guess you could say that to this day Valencia 2007 remains the biggest and most ambitious single-team new F1 car launch of them all, and it may well retain that status for ever.