MotoGP – Sponsorship problems for the Mission Winnow Ducati team

Bruno Gomes

March 6, 2019

Ducati Mission Winnow Team | Photo credits: Ultimate Motorcycling

First, it was in Australia, and now it’s happening in Italy as well. The new main sponsor for the factory Ducati team in MotoGP, Mission Winnow, is being chased by an Italian organization that is trying to defend MotoGP and racing fans from tobacco sponsorships, even if they’re just subliminal. This Italian organization has already won their first battle, and the Ferrari Formula1 team has decided to let go of the Mission Winnow from their official name. It remains to be seen if Ferrari will also erase the Mission Winnow logos from their race car.

But for Ducati, this battle has just started. For the Italian organization Codacons, Mission Winnow is just a company that is a part of the larger group Phillip Morris. As we all know, Phillip Morris is a giant in the tobacco industry, and for many years they’ve sponsored race teams in all kinds of different sports, including MotoGP.

Since Ducati decided to enter MotoGP, Phillip Morris backed the Italian team with money, and in the beginning, and until 2007, MotoGP fans saw the Ducati race bikes covered with the Marlboro logo on the side fairings. When most countries decided to forbid any sponsorship related to tobacco, the Marlboro logo disappeared for the bikes, but Phillip Morris kept sponsoring the factory team, investing a lot of money to get the Ducati on top of the podiums.

This season though, Phillip Morris found a way to go around the rules, and through the Mission Winnow sponsor, they’re back on the fairings of the Ducati Desmosedici GP19. This situation didn’t go unnoticed to Codacons organization, and Ducati now has a problem in their hands just a few days away from the first race of the season in Losail, Qatar.

Phillip Morris, through their international spokesperson Tomasso di Giovanni, has already said that Mission Winnow isn’t promoting tobacco, but instead is a company dedicated to developing and find ways to help smokers around the world to give up their tobacco addiction.

Will this case, that is already being judged in an Italian court, mean that Ducati will need to erase the Mission Winnow logo from their Desmosedici GP19?