Did the Football Team Grand Prix really exist?

There was a historic moment when football and motorsport tried to join forces. It was 2001, and this effort led to the creation of the Premier 1 Grand Prix, a motorsport championship specifically created for certain football teams. The idea came from market research that showed at least 40% of English football season ticket holders were also interested in motorsport. Hence, the idea was born to create a championship where the car liveries would fully reflect the club colors of the football teams participating. After all, the concept of football clubs engaging in other sports is not a new one. In Spain, for example, Barcelona is a multisport club, with teams in basketball, handball, futsal, and roller hockey, in addition to its famous football team. Other examples can be found in Portugal with Porto, or in Turkey with Fenerbahce and Galatasaray. In Italy, the closest example involves Milan and the entrepreneurial spirit of Silvio Berlusconi, who in 1989 founded Polisportiva Milan, a company that brought the Rossoneri colors to volleyball and ice hockey fields. But the Premier 1 Grand Prix is an entirely different story, especially because, according to the original idea, the football clubs were not supposed to fund the project in any way.

Returning to the football-motorsport connection, to validate the Premier 1 Grand Prix project, the FIA's approval also came, the International Automobile Federation, which effectively gave its authorization for a one-make championship financed by MC Capital Investments, with identical cars for all the teams competing. The ultimate goal was to involve at least 30 clubs in time for the first race scheduled for July 2002 at the Estoril circuit. However, that race, like that championship, never took place. A series of financial problems involving both MC Capital Investments and Reynard, the British company tasked with producing the cars, put an end to the Premier 1 Grand Prix before a single lap was even completed. The only remnants of that project are a few photos that today we would call out of context, of cars with football team liveries presented inside a stadium, like the red and white car produced by Benfica, or surrounded by professional footballers in promotional events, like the car featuring the colors of Leeds.

In any case, the Premier 1 Grand Prix was not the only experiment of the union between football and motorsport. In fact, between 2008 and 2011, the Superleague Formula was held, a proper motorsport championship involving numerous European and international football clubs. Prominent names included Milan, Liverpool, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, as well as Flamengo, Corinthians, and even China's Beijing Guoan, the team that won the very first title. Of course, this championship also had a short life, as it didn't achieve the commercial success and fan following it had hoped for, despite the cars on track carrying the colors of the respective clubs. It remains the last attempt to merge these two sports, even though today the connection between football and motorsport, more broadly between football and Formula 1, is stronger than ever. It still endures, but now in a kind of mutual exchange of attention, with Formula 1 drivers captured in the stands of a football stadium or involved in social activities, and vice versa, with footballers happily getting photographed as honorary guests in the paddock of any Grand Prix.