McLaren have potential sponsorship issue at Dutch GP: Complaint made

McLaren's Formula 1 team are under fire. The Woking-based team has Velo as a sponsor on its car. That is a company that makes snus, a nicotine product. The Dutch Grand Prix takes place next week, and so the heart foundation, the KWF (Dutch cancer foundation) and the lung foundation have gone to the Advertising Code Committee.

In the Netherlands, there is a sales ban on these kind of nicotine products once they contain more than 0.035 milligrams of nicotine. With snus, this is usually much more. However, advertising the product is not yet banned, and it happens often: "It shows how the tobacco industry does everything it can to get young people addicted," KWF director Carla van Gils told De Telegraaf.

It was normal if a Formula 1 team had a sponsor who made nicotine-containing products. For example, the 1988 McLaren, which had Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost behind the wheel, is famous for its Marlboro sponsorship. By now, no team has a sponsor that manufactures cigarettes, but McLaren thus has a sponsor on its livery that makes nicotine-containing products.

Next week the Dutch Grand Prix will take place, and so the sponsor's name will be seen on the McLaren car. The Advertising Code Commission does not yet know whether they will take up the case. McLaren and British American Tobacco themselves have yet to comment.