Formula 1 is switching back to real champagne for the award ceremony: the traditional brand Moet & Chandon is replacing Ferrari as an official partner.
The Ferrari brand has been present at every podium ceremony since the 2021 season, but that is now over: because Formula 1 has signed a billion-dollar deal with the luxury group LVMH, LVMH’s Moet & Chandon brand will once again supply real champagne for the Formula 1 award ceremony from 2025.
This means that Moet & Chandon is replacing Ferrari Trento. The Italian company had provided sparkling wine (not champagne) for the Formula 1 podium from 2021 to 2024, ensuring that the distinctive Ferrari logo was visible at every award ceremony. However, Ferrari Trento, based in Trento, is not affiliated with the Scuderia Ferrari team from Maranello.
Ferrari Trento is already the second Formula 1 partner to have to give way to the new LVMH contract: the long-standing timekeeping partner Rolex is also disappearing from Formula 1 and will be replaced by the LVMH brand TAG Heuer in 2025.
Moët & Chandon will even take on a dual role at the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps: the company will also be the title sponsor of the traditional race in the Ardennes.
Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Formula One, speaks of a “perfect combination of performance and elegance” and is already looking forward to “toasting this extraordinary collaboration” – especially in the year of Formula One’s 75th anniversary as a world championship.
Sibylle Scherer, Managing Director of Moët & Chandon, is particularly enthusiastic about her brand’s comeback in Formula 1 and is “proud” that “Moët & Chandon is once again taking a place on the podium”.
Champagne of champions since 1950
The champagne company from Epernay in France does indeed have a long tradition in Formula 1. The first contact came about in 1950 at the sixth round of the World Automobile Championship in Reims, when Paul Chandon-Moet and his cousin Frederic Chandon de Briailles invited the winner, Juan Manuel Fangio, to a sip of victory champagne.
This tradition continued at every French Grand Prix. From 1966, Formula 1 and Moet & Chandon finally entered into an official partnership that lasted for 33 years. After that, G.H. Mumm, a direct champagne competitor from Reims, took over for almost two decades.
After a transitional season with Chandon from Argentina, Formula 1 switched to the champagne brand Carbon for the 2017 season and then back to Moet & Chandon for one year in 2020 before Ferrari took over Trento.
Who really invented the champagne shower
But who actually invented the now traditional “champagne shower” at the award ceremony? The answer often given is the American Dan Gurney, who celebrated his overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1967 with a particularly wet and wild party. However, his Formula 1 rival Graham Hill had already splashed the champagne in a similar exuberant manner at a race in Australia in 1966.
The tradition of using champagne as a prize for a race winner goes back even further: at the 1936 Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island in the USA, there was already a special prize to be won – the contents of a bottle holding nine liters!
