PepsiCo & Mercedes: a sponsorship deal that starts in the gaps
Formula 1 sponsorships begin in the gaps you can’t see on broadcast — the last 1% of preparation that turns “quick” into “repeatable.” The stuff that doesn’t trend on race day, but decides whether your driver hits the braking point with the same confidence on Lap 5 and Lap 55.
That’s why Mercedes calling its new PepsiCo partnership “landmark” matters. Not because Gatorade, Sting and Doritos look good on a brand deck (they will). But because the deal is structured around team performance inputs as much as it is fan-facing activation.
On December 2, 2025, PepsiCo announced a multi-year global partnership with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS starting in 2026, bringing Gatorade, Sting and Doritos into the team’s operations and fan experience plans.
And the timing is not subtle: 2026 is the reset. Mercedes want every controllable variable cleaned up before the regulations turn the sport into a correlation war.
What’s actually in the Mercedes–PepsiCo deal?
The headline is simple: three PepsiCo brands, one team, one start date (2026).
But the subtext is where the value lives.
The partnership pillars (performance + platform)
- Gatorade becomes the performance spearhead, with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) integrated into Mercedes’ performance programs.
- Sting is positioned around energy, speed, and growth markets (PepsiCo highlights Sting’s strength in several countries, and frames it as a Gen Z bridge).
- Doritos is the fan-experience weapon: activation rights, trackside presence, and culture-first content that can scale beyond race weekends.
This matters because F1 is now an ecosystem where:
- the audience is global,
- the calendar is physically brutal, and
- the margins are microscopic.
PepsiCo’s own framing leans into that scale (citing a cumulative global audience and active fanbase figures as part of its wider F1 strategy).
The performance angle: why hydration is a lap-time variable, not a wellness poster
Mercedes didn’t sign PepsiCo to “add vibes.” They signed it to reduce variance.
Gatorade’s entry point is brutally specific: hydration, backed by GSSI, with an explicit claim that drivers can lose up to 4 kg in bodyweight through sweat in a single race.
In F1 terms, that’s not trivia. It’s a performance model.
When dehydration creeps in, you don’t just lose comfort — you lose:
- reaction consistency (micro-delays add up under braking)
- neck endurance (late-race head instability changes braking reference fidelity)
- cognitive bandwidth (strategy updates, tyre management targets, traffic planning)
- thermal tolerance (your “normal” becomes your limit earlier)
In a sport where teams chase tenths through floor edge stiffness and diffuser sealing, optimizing the human system is one of the highest ROI areas left.
Heat, calendar and the sport moving toward mandated cooling
The 2025 calendar again ran 24 races, with predictable thermal stress points (Singapore, Qatar, Abu Dhabi) and long-haul logistics that amplify fatigue.
And the regulations have already started treating heat as a competitive risk factor, not a personal problem.
From 2025 rule changes: if forecasts hit a threshold, a “Heat Hazard” can be declared and teams must fit a mandated driver cooling system (with associated weight allowances).
That regulatory direction tells you what the paddock already knows: heat management has become structural.
What “GSSI in the paddock” likely means operationally
PepsiCo’s release talks about a “fully customized performance hydration strategy” integrated into Mercedes programs.
Translated into trackside reality, that typically means:
- individualized fluid/sodium targets by circuit profile and ambient conditions
- standardized pre-session and post-session hydration protocols
- better management of travel + sleep disruption (where hydration status quietly degrades)
- a more data-complete feedback loop between driver, physio, and engineering (because the body is another sensor)
Mercedes have always been a process team. This fits their operating system.
The marketing angle: why Sting and Doritos matter to Mercedes’ 2026 story
Mercedes don’t just need performance gain. They need relevance gain.
Because the modern “works team” battle is no longer just wind tunnel time vs CFD time — it’s also:
- partner ecosystem strength
- content velocity
- fan acquisition efficiency
PepsiCo’s three-brand approach gives Mercedes a multi-channel engine.
Sting: emerging-market scale and Gen Z activation
PepsiCo positions Sting as an energy drink with strong market standing in several countries and explicitly links it to F1’s growth momentum.
For Mercedes, this matters because 2026 is not just a technical reset — it’s a commercial reset. The team is rebuilding its “next era” identity around:
- George Russell as the established lead
- Kimi Antonelli as the next-generation bet
That pairing is tailor-made for a brand that wants both credibility and youth pull.
Doritos: trackside experience that scales beyond trackside
Doritos’ value is not “snacks at the circuit.” It’s activation design:
- hospitality experiences
- fan zones
- limited-run packaging and content hooks
- social-first moments that travel faster than highlights
PepsiCo frames Doritos as a way to “ignite” race weekends with bold experiences.
In an era where teams are effectively media companies with a race program attached, Doritos is a distribution play.
The timing: a sponsorship built for the 2026 reset
If you’re looking for why this deal is “landmark,” start with the calendar.
Mercedes get a full year runway (2026) to align performance support, fan programs, and brand identity with a regulation change that will reshuffle competitive order.
If you want the broader context, RaceMate has you covered on what that reset actually changes in 2026 Regulations Explained: Lighter Cars & Active Aero and what the first correlation tests will look like in Pre‑Season Testing 2026: Dates & What to Watch.
Mercedes’ 2025 baseline in numbers
To understand why Mercedes would invest in “repeatability inputs,” you need the 2025 competitive picture.
2025 Drivers’ Championship (top 7):
| Pos | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 423 |
| 2 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 421 |
| 3 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 410 |
| 4 | George Russell | Mercedes | 319 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 242 |
| 6 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 156 |
| 7 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 150 |
2025 Constructors’ Championship (top 4):
| Pos | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | McLaren | 833 |
| 2 | Mercedes | 469 |
| 3 | Red Bull | 451 |
| 4 | Ferrari | 398 |
McLaren didn’t just win — they opened a gap. Mercedes finished P2, but 364 points behind the champions.
That’s the key: Mercedes were good, but not title-close.
And in that situation, improving “human performance reliability” is a sensible parallel path to pure car development.
No fastest lap bonus from 2025 onwards: why consistency got louder
From 2025, F1 removed the fastest lap bonus point from the scoring system.
That rule change does something subtle to championship math:
- it reduces late-race “bonus chasing” variance
- it makes pure finishing position consistency slightly more dominant
- it narrows the number of weird edge-case strategies that steal points without changing race outcomes
In other words: clean execution matters more, noise matters less.
A hydration program won’t show up as a “+1 fastest lap point.” It shows up as fewer messy laps, fewer compromised stints, and fewer Sundays where your performance falls off a cliff at the exact moment the race becomes a decision tree.
What this could mean for Russell and Antonelli
PepsiCo’s announcement explicitly references Mercedes’ 2026 driver pairing as George Russell + Kimi Antonelli, and frames it as “two generations” of talent.
From a performance lens:
- Russell’s value is that he’s already operating at the sharp end — his 2025 points haul (319) put him fourth overall.
- Antonelli’s value is that Mercedes can build a system around him early: routine, recovery, travel handling, race-weekend consistency.
From a championship lens, Mercedes’ 2025 result tells you the job:
- they beat Red Bull over a season (469 vs 451)
- but they weren’t in the McLaren fight (833)
That’s a team living in the gap between “best of the rest” and “title threat.”
And those gaps are where process sponsors actually matter.
How to model the impact: simulate points without bonus noise
No sponsor can promise lap time. What they can promise is a more controlled environment.
If you want to explore how tighter execution changes championship outcomes under the current points rules (with no fastest lap bonus), run scenarios in the RaceMate points calculator:
- Try the simulator: RaceMate Championship Simulator
A useful approach:
- Start with a baseline using the 2025 points table.
- Adjust a handful of “execution races” (the hot, high-deg, high-stress weekends).
- See how quickly small position swings compound when the season is 24 rounds long.
It’s not about predicting the exact result. It’s about seeing why teams chase marginal gains that look “off-track.”
Conclusion: Mercedes didn’t just sign PepsiCo — they signed a system
This partnership is “landmark” because it’s not pretending F1 is only about the car.
Yes, 2026 will be decided by aerodynamics, power unit integration, and correlation discipline. But championships are also decided by whether your organization can repeat its best version of itself — at 2am in a hotel, at 55°C track temp, after three continents in four weeks.
Mercedes enter 2026 coming off a clear P2 in the Constructors’ Championship, with Russell delivering elite points and Antonelli representing the future. Their gap to McLaren is large enough that every controllable input matters — including the human ones.
So when Gatorade brings GSSI into the paddock, Sting powers the fan-growth narrative, and Doritos builds trackside experience into content, this isn’t just branding.
It’s Mercedes trying to win the next era in the place where eras actually begin - in the gaps.