Formula 1 team McLaren Racing will partner with Tezos to launch a range of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) celebrating the team's heritage. As part of the partnership, the blockchain's logo will also be featured across the team's vehicles and race suits.
According to an announcement, Tezos will become McLaren Racing's Official Technical Partner in a "multi-year partnership" across Formula 1, Indycar, and esports, with a view to creating an NFT platform "with fan experience at its heart", drawing on its racing heritage and historical driver line-ups.
The partnership will also see the Tezos brand emblazoned on the race suits of F1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Riccardo, as well as AMSP drivers Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist. Tezos will also become a presenting partner for the McLaren Shadow esports team.
We are excited to welcome @Tezos, the world’s most advanced blockchain, as our Official Technical Partner. 🤝
McLaren will use the energy efficient and upgradeable Tezos network to create a series of non-fungible tokens (NFT) across F1, INDYCAR and esports.
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) June 17, 2021
In a press release accompanying the announcement, Lindsey Eckhouse, director of licensing, ecommerce and esports at McLaren Racing, described the partnership as "an innovative step in an exciting and rapidly developing industry," adding that it will enable fans to own key pieces of the team.
NFTs are cryptographically unique tokens that can be linked to digital content such as artwork, or real-world objects. The sports industry has been an early adopter of NFTs, with the likes of fantasy soccer game Sorare and basketball collectible series NBA Top Shot emerging as major NFT platforms.
Formula 1 itself has inked a deal with Animoca Brands, with a virtual race track NFT from its F1 Delta Time game selling for nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year. And McLaren isn't the first F1 team to partner with Tezos; last month, Red Bull Racing Honda announced a similar technical partnership with the blockchain platform. A car featuring a Tezos logo won the Grand Prix in Azerbaijan earlier this month.
McLaren Racing also lauded Tezos' sustainability and energy efficiency, claiming that its proof of stake consensus mechanism uses "two million times less energy" than the proof of work system employed by blockchains such as Ethereum.
With NFTs' energy consumption and carbon footprint coming under increasing scrutiny, brands are taking a variety of different approaches to addressing the issue; while some are building on proof of stake blockchains, others are using carbon offsets to minimize their environmental impact.