It was just a few weeks ago that we reported on Whyte Bikes court case victory over new energy drinks startup, Rich Energy. Rich Energy, sponsors of a F1 team despite not having any products of their own available to buy yet, were slapped down for using Whyte Bike’s years old logo.
Well, just as we thought things were calming down and Rich Energy were off back to find a graphic designer who can do more than just ‘ctrl-c’ the whole thing has erupted on Twitter as Rich Energy threw their toys at Whyte for a cheeky tweet.
It all kicked off when Whyte Bikes posted this on their Twitter feed, complete with winky face emojis.
But that seemed to go down badly with whoever is in charge of the social media accounts at the sugary drinks start-up.
Check out the replies on the actual Twitter feed below and let the memes begin.
Seeing that “cheeky tweet”, it does strike me that the MB logo spun 180 makes a good starting point for Whyte’s logo…
Or is that the joke? Do I need to check my humour-o-meter?
It’s neat that they accuse Whyte of investing zero in F1 because Whyte were sponsoring the Lotus F1 Junior team, including Esteban Ocon and Alex Albon among others, back in 2014. You can find pictures on the web of all of them wearing Lotus F1 overalls with the Whyte logo on the right arm. The Lotus F1 team of that time (now Renault) was a direct descendant of the Benetton team, for whom Jon Whyte was a senior designer in their 1990s heyday.
https://twitter.com/whytebikes/status/452037404153507840?lang=en-gb
Oh, and of course it’s purely coincidental that William Storey chose black and gold deliberately to revive Lotus’s iconic colour scheme: “I loved the JPS Lotus – I think it’s the greatest livery of all time. You don’t need to be Hercule Poirot to realise we’re bringing that back.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/haas-rich-energy-jps-lotus-look/4334023/
I’m with Bez on the b&g jps Lotus as a boi had a scaletrix version many moons ago… the richer they rise, the greater they’ll… FALL! (splat)