Aston Martin has added a new badge to its 2026 commercial portfolio, confirming a multi-year partnership with Celsius that will see the US energy drink brand become the team’s global energy drink partner.
On the surface it’s a straightforward sponsor swap — Celsius has arrived at Silverstone less than a season after its previous team deal with Ferrari expired at the end of 2025 — but it’s also a neat snapshot of how quickly F1’s commercial landscape turns over when the sport heads into a new rules era.
Celsius first dipped its toe into Formula 1 by attaching itself to Ferrari around the United States rounds in 2023, before moving onto what was reported as a wider two-year arrangement covering 2024 and 2025. Alongside that, the brand also struck a personal endorsement deal with Charles Leclerc in August 2024.
That thread now looks to have been cut. Ferrari didn’t renew its agreement beyond 2025, and Leclerc’s own Celsius tie-up also appears to have ended, with the drink no longer listed among partners on his personal website. There’s no drama implied, just the familiar churn of contracts in a paddock where marketing departments are as busy as aero groups.
For Aston Martin, it’s another step in positioning itself as a team that sells more than lap time. The squad has made a point of building fan-facing programmes alongside its on-track project, and Celsius is leaning into that with activations tied to its LIVE. FIT. GO campaign, which launched last year in the United States, Canada and Australia.
The first public hit comes immediately: at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in March, Aston Martin and Celsius will co-host a “Run challenge” aimed at fans, built around custom run segments inspired by race circuits, city landmarks and Aston Martin Aramco touchpoints. It’s the sort of off-track experience that teams are increasingly using to justify global partnerships: measurable engagement, social content, and something that exists even when the cars are in parc fermé.
Jefferson Slack, Aston Martin Aramco’s Managing Director Commercial, framed it exactly that way, pointing to the team’s focus on “unique experiences” and describing Celsius as a way to bring “fresh energy” to its I / AM programme. “Kicking off with our first co-hosted Run Club in Melbourne, throughout the season we will create several creative activations to bring the partnership to life,” he said.
Celsius, meanwhile, is clearly treating this as an expansion rather than a replacement. Chief Brand Officer Kyle Watson described Aston Martin’s fan base as a natural fit and said the brand is looking to “activate” the partnership globally — corporate-speak, yes, but it underlines what sponsors want from F1 in 2026: worldwide reach, fast content cycles and a route into lifestyle culture, not just a logo photographed at 300km/h.
There’s also a broader business context to Celsius’s continued push into major sports properties. The company received a $550m investment from PepsiCo in 2022, with PepsiCo taking a minority stake of 8.5 per cent. Celsius has since built a stable of sponsorships across the sporting map — including Major League Soccer in a deal running until 2026, and the Professional Fighters League — plus endorsements with individual athletes in football, rugby and athletics.
The only unanswered question on the F1 side is whether Celsius will re-enter driver marketing through Aston Martin. With Leclerc seemingly no longer on its books, it’s unclear if one of Aston Martin’s drivers — Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll — will become the brand’s next athlete-facing figurehead, or if Celsius will keep the relationship strictly team-based this time around.
Either way, it’s an eyebrow-raising destination change given the timing. F1’s 2026 reset is already prompting teams to sharpen their identity, and sponsors are following the same logic: pick a platform, tell a story, and make sure it plays across more than a race weekend. Aston Martin, for all the scrutiny that inevitably follows its on-track ambitions, continues to build as if it expects to be a central character in the new era — and deals like this are part of that claim.
