Sepang 2026 · Stories
The Billions Behind the Silver Arrows
By Will Tygart · September 28, 2026
Petronas has had its name on the Mercedes for sixteen years. This is the business story: what a national oil company actually buys when it buys a Formula 1 team.
I've already written about the on-track side of this partnership — the wins at Sepang, the heartbreaks, the homecoming. This is the other half. Because when you see "Mercedes-AMG Petronas" on the timing screens, you're looking at one of the longest title partnerships in the sport: sixteen years, since the works team returned in 2010. And unlike most sponsors, Petronas isn't selling you anything in the grandstands. It's Malaysia's national oil company. So what is it buying?
Start with the obvious: the brand. The Petronas name — and those twin towers on the Kuala Lumpur skyline that every TV helicopter shot finds — rides on one of the most successful racing teams ever built. A decade of dominance, championships stacked like cordwood, and now a title fight in 2026 with the team leading both championships. Every race, in every market on earth, Malaysia's most global company gets its name spoken by commentators in a hundred languages. You cannot buy that kind of reach. Well — actually, you can. This is what it costs.
Then there's the technical side, which is the part people underestimate. Petronas isn't a sticker sponsor. It's the Title and Technical Partner, which means Malaysian-developed fuel and lubricants go into the power unit. The company has engineers embedded in the program, solving the same marginal-gains problems as the aerodynamicists. When the partnership works, it's genuinely collaborative — a national oil company's R&D department racing at 300 km/h.
And then there's the part no other sponsor on the grid can match: the physical home. The circuit itself is the PETRONAS Sepang International Circuit. Read that again. The team with Petronas on the car races at the circuit with Petronas on the name, in the country where Petronas is the national oil company. No other team-sponsor pairing in Formula 1 has anything like it. Ferrari has history. Red Bull has money. Mercedes has a country.
That's why I keep calling this weekend a home race in everything but the official title. It's not just sentiment — though the grandstands full of teal will supply plenty of that. It's structural. The money, the fuel, the circuit, the company: the whole stack is Malaysian. When the silver cars win at Sepang, it's a Malaysian company's team winning at a Malaysian company's circuit in Malaysia. Nobody else on the grid gets to say that.
Sixteen years. Whatever Petronas is paying, it has bought something no amount of money usually buys: a home.