Dirt Is Good, the Unilever laundry brand sold as Persil in Europe and OMO elsewhere, has signed multi-year sponsorship agreements with both McLaren Racing and Aston Martin F1, announced this week. The deals place visible branding on two midfield-to-podium cars and extend into F1 Academy, the all-female developmental series entering its third season. Financial terms remain undisclosed, though industry observers peg midtier F1 livery packages at $8-12 million annually per team for brands without title or principal status.

The dual-team structure is unusual. Most FMCG sponsors pick one horse—Heineken with its race title sponsorships, Rolex with its timekeeping exclusivity. Dirt Is Good now appears on both the papaya McLaren of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and the green Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. The brand also locked in as a partner across F1 Academy's ten-team grid, a lower-cost hedge that delivers year-round content tied to the sport's stated gender-diversity push. Unilever has form here: it ran a similar play in football, sponsoring multiple federations during the Women's World Cup cycle when exclusivity fees were negotiable.

The timing follows McLaren's $220 million sale of a minority stake to MSP Sports Capital in 2020 and Aston Martin's recapitalization under Lawrence Stroll, who has poured an estimated $1 billion-plus into the team since 2018. Both organizations now operate with American-style commercial rigor—dedicated sponsorship desks, activation minimums written into contracts, quarterly brand-health tracking. That infrastructure makes split deals possible: Dirt Is Good can run discrete campaigns (McLaren for youth/gaming demos, Aston Martin for legacy/luxury adjacency) without the teams stepping on each other's creative or hospitality allocations.

For Unilever, the move signals a bet that F1's North American audience growth—Las Vegas drew 1.2 million viewers on ABC in 2024, up 38% year-over-year—justifies premium spend in a category traditionally light on motorsport. The brand's "Dirt Is Good" platform, which encourages outdoor play, maps cleanly to F1's mud-free glamour in an ironic register that works on social. Expect activations around pit-lane grime, helmet-cleaning content, and influencer plays during the Miami and Austin race weekends. The F1 Academy component supplies B-roll and purpose-wash at a fraction of the cost.

McLaren also picked up Global, a hydration brand, in the same window, while Aston Martin added Aquame, a premium water label. The hydration cluster—Red Bull with its namesake drink, Mercedes with Petronas water partnerships—remains one of F1's stickiest categories, with in-garage visibility and driver-endorsement optionality baked in. Both deals suggest teams are layering smaller sponsors into gaps left by title partners (McLaren has none; Aston Martin's Aramco deal is energy-specific).

Watch for Dirt Is Good livery placement during pre-season testing in Bahrain, typically late February. If the brand lands barge-board or halo real estate, the deals likely cleared $10 million each. F1 Academy's season opener is set for March in Jeddah; expect Unilever to staff hospitality there as a low-stakes proof-of-concept before scaling at Silverstone. McLaren's 2025 kit launch is rumored for mid-February, Aston Martin's a week later. Sponsorship density on both cars will clarify whether these are anchor deals or placeholder patches.

The F1 commercial calendar now runs January through November, and brands that close deals in December—like Dirt Is Good—are either paying premium rates for late entry or secured options during mid-2024 negotiations that only now formalized. Either scenario suggests confidence in F1's audience durability and teams' ability to deliver measurable sponsor ROI, which, after a decade of Liberty Media ownership, finally resembles a functioning market.