The Most Bizarre Sponsors In The History Of F1 – SlashGear

Certainly another wild story, the Rich Energy fiasco, will surely go down as one of the strangest sponsorship deals in the sport. ESPN reports that the entirety of Formula 1 interactions between Haas (and other teams) and Rich Energy have been strange and somewhat contentious, to say the least. There had been questions surrounding the legitimacy of the product when Rich Energy came into the fold in 2019, and in court, the outfit had been ordered to remove the antler logo from its marketing efforts because it had been lifted almost directly from another company. Shortly after, it came out that Rich Energy’s CEO William Storey had tried to buy out Force India as it was headed into arbitration, and then backed out of a sponsorship deal with Williams at the last minute (literally leaving Claire Williams waiting in an Austin restaurant) days before announcing the Haas partnership.

Donut Media also reports that in the midst of all this, Haas never received the sponsorship money promised in the agreement, and eventually Storey would simply Tweet out that the company had terminated its deal with the team. This was apparently happening as Storey was being ousted from the company, and didn’t reflect the actual facts on the ground. Nevertheless, with a rogue partner that had hijacked Haas’ trademark vehicle livery and continuously failed to hold up its end of the agreement, the team was forced to move on.