Yachty's producer, Earl On The Beat, created an original track featuring miles-per-hour vs. beats-per-minute to match the pace of driver Lando’s fastest lap. Our video fused music with the F1 world through split screens, fast camera pans, and visual effects to showcase the pairing of two different worlds. Yachty, Busta and influencers individually recorded original rap verses to the beat, kicking off an open challenge where we invited music fans to create their own fast rap. The intentionally fast-paced track and edit was youthful, social-first, and led to Chrome’s Speed Challenge driving original user generated rap content across TikTok.

Formula One (F1) has gone from a motorsport for the hardcore racing fan to a global obsession as seen with the success of shows like the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. Viewership doubled from 2018 to 2023 in the US alone, with fans consuming more content than ever - before, during, and buzzing even after each race. With this new energy and younger fanbase, F1 conversation has gone from niche motorsport forums to the main pages of social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. #Formula1 has 61.5B views on TikTok alone, along with 84M Tweets.

This dramatic shift in the way Formula One is consumed and talked about in the US made it the perfect affinity to tap into. Chrome recognized early the cultural shift around Formula One, and created a huge, multi-year sponsorship deal with McLaren F1 to create the brand association of Chrome’s fast browser speeds with that of the McLaren team’s incredible race speeds. Noting the crossover of F1 with not just sport, but with fashion, music, and celebrities, we set out to show how Chrome can be associated with speed in a culturally relevant way.

In the two minute-long “Chrome Speed Challenge,” driver Lando Norris calls on Lil Yachty to see if he can come up with a rap that matches the speed of the browser and the McLaren racing car. With the legendary lyricist Busta Rhymes also on board, the duo moves at a breakneck pace to find the perfect verse and flow to complement the speed of the car, the browser and each other, warming up and rapping, whilst a split-screen visual shows Norris driving. Yachty then sets up the call to action, challenging the audience to take the next verse.

In 2022, Google Chrome became an Official Partner of the McLaren Formula 1 Team. The partnership provides McLaren with a 5G-enabled, seamless technology experience across Chrome browsers and Android devices in McLaren’s racing operations, with the goal of improving on-track performance, reducing lag time in communications to improve overall race speed. For Chrome, we were able to correlate McLaren and F1’s incredible speeds and our fast-paced browser with the goal of driving preference for Chrome amongst iOS users. To do so, we were tasked to celebrate the speed of Google Chrome in a culturally-relevant way, connecting the world's fastest browser to the fastest sport with a social-driven stunt that leveraged the McLaren partnership.

“Chrome wants to know if we’re as fast as they are,” is the prompt that driver Lando Norris uses in speaking to Lil’ Yachty to use Chrome to search for the fastest rappers of all time, to kick off the creation of the original music track. We collaborated with Busta Rhymes, the fastest rapper alive and Yachty's music producer, Earl On The Beat to create a variable beat track that matches Lando's fastest lap time (1:14:69) and his fastest speed in that lap (220 MPH) to be the core of our custom beat and overall rap. Playing with miles-per-hour to beats-per-minute, the track cleverly speeds up to match the increasing speed of Lando driving. The song features in the hero film as well as in an open verse challenge on TikTok where creator rappers are invited to lay down their verse to become part of the final track.