Louis Vuitton named official partner for the 2025 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix
The driver who wins the first race of the 2025 Formula 1 season won’t just take home glory – he’ll be delivered a trophy in a monogrammed trunk, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
In 2025, the Formula 1 season will go lights out at the Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix, with the iconic label named as the title partner for the year’s first race.
The news follows an announcement made last October that Louis Vuitton’s parent group LVMH had signed a 10-year deal with Formula 1, described by representatives at the time as an “unprecedented agreement between the world leader in luxury and the pinnacle of motorsport”.
“The people, the quest for excellence and the passion for innovation are at the heart of the activity of our Maisons and Formula 1,” expressed Bernard Arnault, LVMH chairman and CEO. “In motorsport as in fashion, watchmaking or wines and spirits, every detail counts on the path to success.”
“Both in our workshops and on circuits around the world, it is this incessant search to break boundaries that inspires our vision, and this is the meaning that we want to bring to this great and unique partnership between Formula 1 and our group.”
You can consider both partnerships – the title partnership between Louis Vuitton and the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, as well as the global agreement between LVMH and Formula 1 – the zenith of a relationship with its roots in the early 20th century. That was, after all, when Georges Vuitton, son of founder Louis Vuitton, oversaw the design of trunks and chauffeur bags that kept pace with the rise of the automobile.
It was an interest that Georges passed down to his twin sons, Pierre and Jean, who designed a roadster in 1909, and fed projects that were born well after his passing: a car rally in 1993 at Paris’ Jardin de Bagatelle, eventually renamed the Louis Vuitton Classic; concours d’élégance for vehicles in London, Paris and New York from the ’90s to the early 2000s; and automobile awards in honour of car collectives and innovation in the space.
Louis Vuitton would later exchange a firm handshake with the Automobile Club de Monaco in 2021, both developing and presenting a Trophy Trunk by the Maison for the winner of the Monaco Grand Prix until 2024.
That Louis Vuitton would eventually extend their “Victory travels in Louis Vuitton” to Formula 1—a tradition of creating trunks for trophies awarded at the close of the Australian Open, the FIFA World Cup, Roland Garros, the Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games—should come as no surprise. Especially as the sport has never been more culturally relevant, thanks to Netflix’s smash hit Drive to Survive, and the popularity of racing drivers and their partners. In 2024, a record-breaking 452,055 attended the race at Albert Park, eclipsing 2023’s 444,631 and 2022’s 419,114.
If patterns are anything to go by, you can expect 2025—the 75th year of the F1—to be the biggest season yet. Now that Melbourne has returned to being the first race of the Formula 1 season, the energy at Albert Park will be nothing short of electric. We will see you there.
This story was originally published on gq.com.au
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