Banco Santander will return to Formula 1 in 2022 as Ferrari’s sponsor on a multi-year contract. The team’s former high-profile sponsor of eight years from the start of 2010, left the team at the end of 2017 leading to Ferrari joining forces with Mission Winnow.

This announcement comes at a time of uncertainty for Mission Winnow, having been revealed that they could themselves step away from Ferrari, or at least not act as title sponsor anymore.

Mission Winnow branding featured sporadically on Ferrari’s liveries throughout the 2018 and 2019 season, but didn’t feature once on the 2020 car. It appeared again in green on the 2021 livery for the majority of races but has always been controversial at European events for the promotion of tobacco products.

This time the Santander branding returns to Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars and future WEC Hypercars after a four year absence from F1. Their previous stint followed the footsteps of Spaniard Fernando Alonso in 2007 by joining McLaren alongside him, before sticking with the British team as Alonso left in controversial fashion and rejoined Renault for 2008 and 2009.

Santander then re-kindled its alliance with Alonso and followed him to Ferrari in 2010. Alonso would leave Ferrari for 2015 to rejoin McLaren, again leaving Santander behind.

This time round, the Spanish organisation will feature distinctly on the cars, team clothing, race suits and in the pit garages.

Many fans have already stated their desire for Ferrari to move away from their current matte red, black, maroon and green livery design and return to the gloss red and white design seen through most of the period of Santander’s sponsorship tenure.

However the rumoured break-up with Mission Winnow may actually provide the opportunity to do exactly that – minus the gloss paint perhaps from a technical point of view.

“It’s an honour to team up again with a global financial institution like Santander,” says Ferrari Chairman John Elkann.

“We look forward to partnering with them to deliver our key objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.”

“We believe Formula 1 with its innovations and technological developments will benefit our industry and ultimately society as a whole.”