McLaren Racing, which competes in Formula 1 and IndyCar, has joined the Hedera Council to help govern the corporate blockchain network.
The Surrey, UK-based racing team – which won the last two F1 team championships and last year’s drivers’ title with Lando Norris – will contribute to the management of Hedera’s software and services, actively participate in the network and have equal voting rights alongside other Board members, according to a announcement.
“McLaren Racing is built on performance and innovation, and that extends to the way we engage our fans,” said Nick Martin, co-Chief Commercial Officer of McLaren Racing, in a statement. “By joining the Hedera Council, we can help shape the evolution of the Hedera network while delivering a seamless, secure and scalable fan experience globally.”
McLaren has already launched free digital collectibles with race and location-specific creative elements at Hedera, with drops during the Australian Grand Prix weekend, the Chinese GP and a third planned for next weekend’s Japanese GP. The collectibles use both native Hedera wallets and Web2 social login wallets, targeting motorsports fans new to Web3, as well as Hedera community members new to racing.
The collaboration goes beyond just collectibles. The McLaren leadership will take part in HederaCon on May 4 in Miami Beach, alongside the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Miami. Hedera operates through a rotating board of 39 members spanning the finance, energy, legal, technology and academia sectors, with no member having more voting rights than others.
Last month, shipping giant FedEx joined the Hedera Council, expanding a list of other notable companies including Google, IBM, Dell Technologies, LG, Deutsche Telekom and video game maker Ubisoft.
Hedera’s HBAR token rose over 2% on the day and recently traded at $0.094 per data from CoinGecko. The token remains 83% away from its 2021 all-time high of $0.569.