DP WORLD X MCLAREN - INGREDIENTS OF SPORT
Client: DP World × McLaren F1 Team
Year: 2026
Industry: Logistics, Motorsport
Services: VFX, hybrid CG and AI pipeline, 2D, grade
Summary
A four-film campaign for DP World’s F1 partnership with McLaren, visualising the unseen layers behind elite racing performance. We delivered VFX across the series using a hybrid CG and AI-assisted pipeline, taking the work from microscopic material detail through to global logistics in motion.
The work
DP World is the global logistics partner of the McLaren F1 Team. The partnership is built on a real proposition — DP World moves McLaren’s freight, supplies and equipment between races. Ingredients of Sport set out to make that proposition cinematic. Four films, each covering a different layer of what it actually takes to put a Formula 1 car on the grid.
Problem
The series spanned a wide visual range. Microscopic material close-ups on one end, global logistics on the other. The work needed a single look that held the films together as one campaign rather than four separate spots.
Subjects you cannot photograph
Carbon weave at material scale. Movement through global trade networks. The internal logic of how a race team gets to the grid. Most of what the campaign needed to show isn’t filmable, which meant CG and AI work doing most of the lifting.
Pace of delivery
The campaign launched ahead of the 2025 season finale. Four films, multi-format, finished to broadcast and social standard, on a calendar that the racing schedule wasn’t going to bend for.
Hybrid CG and AI pipeline
We ran the VFX across the series using a mixed pipeline. CG for the work that needed engineering accuracy and full creative control. AI-assisted VFX for the elements where it gave us speed and visual range we couldn’t match in pure CG inside the timeline. Each shot used whichever tool got us the best version of the image, not whichever tool fitted the pipeline philosophy.
One look across four films
Look development locked early and applied across all four films. Same grade language, same comp behaviour, same treatment of materials and motion. The films could have lived as four standalone pieces. They needed to feel like a series.
Working into Chrome’s production
Chrome led the production with Stephen Parker directing. We sat inside their pipeline as the VFX partner, working alongside the live-action shoot and the wider creative team. Hand-offs ran cleanly because the look was locked before anyone shot a frame.
How we made it
The work ran across four films, with VFX, 2D, comp and grade all delivered out of Covert. Ivan Hryhorjuk supervised, with creative direction from Dan Andrew, 2D led by Hasan Khan, grade by Olha Korzhynska, and senior production by Kirsty Ratcliffe.
