Motorsport or auto racing is a sports competition involving vehicles like cars, motorbikes, trucks, and others. The competition is not only between racing drivers but also between the vehicles themselves. Therefore, several racing teams in each competition fight together with their racing drivers.
Running a racing team is not easy and can be very expensive as well, so a racing team needs some sponsors. By helping a racing team financially, sponsoring brands have the right to put their logos on the racing team’s vehicles. Sometimes, a brand is not only supporting one or more racing teams, but it can also build its racing team.
Popular Sponsor Logos in Motor Sports
Racing vehicles in motorsports can be viewed as fast-moving billboards by many brands in the world. Even brands without any connection to the automotive world can make their names bigger by putting their logos on racing vehicles, as many people worldwide view auto racing.
Red Bull Logo
Arguably the most recognizable brand in motorsports, Red Bull has sponsored many things in the auto racing world. Its striking yellow circle with two bulls coming after each other from both sides logo can be seen in many racing cars, bikes, trucks, boats, planes, as well as racing tracks and events.
Although sports logos appear in various kinds of auto racing, the racing competition that has the most impact on the popularity of Red Bull’s logo is Formula One.
At first, the energy drink brand was sponsoring a Formula One team, but in 2005, it started its own Formula One team called Red Bull Racing. Later in 2006, it added another team called Scuderia Torro Rosso, currently called Scuderia Alpha Tauri.
Red Bull Racing has been dominating Formula One since 2010, with their driver, Sebastian Vettel, winning four consecutive championships. Their current driver, Max Verstappen, recently won the championship in 2021, which boosted the popularity of the Red Bull logo.
Repsol Logo
The noticeable orange, red, black, and white stripes color scheme of the Repsol logo has decorated Honda’s racing bikes in MotoGP since 1995. Other than the eye-catching colors and logo of Repsol, the success of the Repsol Honda team in this kind of sport has also made the logo very popular.
Several MotoGP legends, namely Valentino Rossi, Nicky Hayden, Casey Stoner, and Marc Marquez have ridden for the Repsol Honda team in some stints of their careers. They have also won some championships with the team.
The Spanish oil brand also put its logo as a motorsports sponsor on the 1995 championship-winning car in WRC, Subaru, with Colin McRae as the driver. However, the orange and red rectangles with white bold ‘REPSOL’ in between the logo were only put on the cars’ front and rear bumpers.
Marlboro Logo
Similar to Repsol, Marlboro’s logo color scheme has also decorated some racing teams’ vehicles. At least two dominant racing teams have used the red and white of the cigarette brand’s logo as their liveries.
The two successful teams are McLaren and Mitsubishi, competing in Formula One and WRC. The McLaren team dominated the sports competition from the 1970s until the 1990s with James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, and other drivers, while the Marlboro’s sponsored Mitsubishi team dominated in 1999 with Tommi Makinen.
The popularity of the red square and white triangle logo of Marlboro can not be continued through auto racing since the regulation has banned cigarette sponsorship. Nevertheless, the sports logo remains iconic thanks to the McLaren and Mitsubishi racing teams.
The Importance of the Designs
The logos of Red Bull, Repsol, and Marlboro probably became popular in motorsports mainly because of the success of the racing teams that they have sponsored or made. However, it is almost impossible for a logo to be as popular as those three logos without the design of the logo itself.
There are many sponsors with perhaps more successful racing teams than those three examples, but the logos of those sponsors are not as famous simply because of their designs. The designs need to be striking enough without forgetting the brands’ identities.
Designing a logo to be iconic in motorsports can be challenging, but it does not have to be too complex, as the three examples show. You can create your logo completely with its font style by taking some inspiration from the Red Bull, Repsol, and Marlboro logos.
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