Lap of Legends makes jaw-dropping technology look eye-catchingly stunning.

In the world’s first real-vs.-virtual F1 race, Logan Sargeant, a young F1 driver facing overwhelming career pressure, competed against AR avatars of his childhood F1 heroes who inspired his love of racing, driven by AI.

From the glow of the race car avatars to the hues of blue and red that coat the screen, we gave this first-of-its-kind race a sense of visual grandeur that matches its technological brilliance.

Making the joy of sports even more beautiful to behold.

F1 racing is experiencing a cultural shift that Michelob ULTRA is primed to address.

We believe that playing and watching sports is only worth it if you enjoy it. But unfortunately, F1 racing is becoming so pressure-packed and hyper-competitive that the high stakes are outweighing the joy of racing.

Drivers have publicly opened up about their struggles with the high-stakes intensity of racing culture.

Especially Logan Sargeant. He’s the first American F1 driver in 30 years. It’s one of the highest honors in racing today, but it also comes with even higher stakes in a hyper-competitive league like F1.

And the intensity extends beyond the drivers themselves. Their crew members, their fans, and the journalists who cover them all now understand that each race feels like a fight to stay alive in the racing world. The competition has become more existential.

So as the league works to alleviate this pressure, we aim to rekindle the joy that shaped F1 racing in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

An Iconic Brand Platform In A Competitive Category

Michelob ULTRA’s brand platform, “It’s Only Worth It If You Enjoy It,” has made unparalleled impacts in the world of sports over the last few years, addressing issues such as burnout, fans being shut out of games during COVID lockdowns, accessibility, and more. Our cultural relevance in sports has helped us become the #1-selling beer in the U.S.

But competition never ends in the beer category. To keep your sales up, you need to keep being culturally relevant.

Using Relevance to Drive Sales

So, to continue growing our sales, we set out to inject Michelob ULTRA with a new burst of cultural relevance.

A Timely Reminder

Our brief focused on reminding everyone who loves the world’s fastest-growing sport — F1 racing — that joy is an essential component of the sport, and an active lifestyle in general.

An unprecedented issue in sports culture demanded an unprecedented solution.

So we developed the first-ever real-vs-virtual F1 race and aired it on live TV. We put Logan Sargeant, a young F1 driver, on a real racetrack against AR avatars of his racing heroes when he was younger, driven by AI.

These retired icons — Mario Andretti, Jacques Villeneuve, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Jenson Button, and Damon Hill — embodied the kind of joy that Logan became a driver to experience. Their joyful outlook offers an antidote to the win-at-all-costs mentality making F1 racing today so toxic for drivers, fans, and journalists.

And we did it all through AR, AI machine learning, and telemetry, using tech to quite literally change the game of F1 racing and create the first sporting event that spanned different dimensions of reality.

Using Tech to Do the Impossible: With the help of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning, and telemetry, Logan raced in his car on a track — like he normally would — at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix. But his digitized opponents appeared as augmented reality avatars in his racing helmet, responding to his driving motions in real time with the help of machine learning and 45 years of historical racing data programmed as context for each automated racing decision. This technology is so precise and true to racing physics that F1 teams have started using it themselves to model and test new racing strategies.

Doing the Impossible Across Touchpoints: We previewed Lap of Legends at the United States Grand Prix in October 2023, and at premiere events in early 2024. Then, the full program aired on AMC and BBC America in spring 2024, interspersed with stories of Logan’s journey.