Breaking news: Ferrari will remove their main sponsor’s brand to avoid trouble in Australia and will alter all the graphics for their cars, suits, helmets, panels, and uniforms of staff.

In order to make this happen, the team will return to using 2018 clothing for the Australia Grand Prix.

Many saw this coming during the weekend when the FIA issued the latest list of entries for the 2019 Formula One World Championship, most notably the removal of tobacco corporation Philip Morris’s ‘Mission Winnow’ brand, from the Ferrari team name. TJ13 predicted this would happen some weeks ago.

During the launch of the SF90, Ferrari’s official team name was Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow, their logo appearing on all the spaces of the car allocated to Philip Morris since the end of 2018.

Yesterday it was confirmed that the problems related to an alleged link between the name and a tobacco manufacturer have not yet been overcome, and hence the decision to remove at the moment all references that may be the cause of controversy or even the Australian government banning the team from participating in the Grand Prix.

Mission Winnow does not appear on the F1.com website, Leclerc wearing 2018 kit

This means the team must remove all the graphics for their cars, suits, helmets, panels, and uniforms. The latter, which are used by all the staff of the team, will be temporarily replaced in Melbourne by those 2018.

It is known that in Maranello the team are working 24 hours a day to make this late change happen during an already intense period before the departure of the team for the first race of the year.