Doritos Loaded pairs Gordon Ramsay with George Russell in F1 campaign
Doritos Loaded pairs Ramsay with George Russell, adding eight recipes and F1 fan zone food trucks to turn a film into sustained experiences.
Doritos Loaded is pairing Gordon Ramsay with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One driver George Russell in a global campaign built around a new commercial that blends food, motorsport, and entertainment.
The brand framed the activation as part of its broader push to associate Doritos Loaded with high-energy sporting and cultural moments, spanning both at-home recipes and trackside fan experiences.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- How the campaign is structured
- Why recipes and trackside activations are doing the heavy lifting
- What this means for marketers
How the campaign is structured
The creative centers on a commercial set inside a Doritos Loaded food truck. Ramsay is shown preparing “Doritos Loaded hellfire chicken nachos” while the truck speeds through city streets, with the reveal that Russell is driving.
Beyond the film, Doritos Loaded said Ramsay will develop eight Doritos Loaded recipes intended to show how consumers can combine Doritos with fresh ingredients to create shareable meals. The first recipe highlighted is the hellfire chicken nachos, featuring Ramsay’s signature hellfire sauce, and it appears in the commercial.
The recipe component is also positioned as channel-ready content. The rollout is planned to extend to restaurant and hospitality operators across selected global markets, giving the campaign a pathway beyond consumer media into foodservice environments where “menu as media” can reinforce brand association.
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Why recipes and trackside activations are doing the heavy lifting
Doritos Loaded is extending the partnership into Formula 1 fan experiences throughout the season, including fan zone food trucks that will carry two exclusive recipes as limited-edition menu items tied to the collaboration.
This structure matters because it treats the celebrity and sports tie-in as more than a single media moment. The commercial works as the attention driver, but the recipes and fan zone executions create repeatable touchpoints that can refresh creative, rotate offers, and keep the partnership “live” across the race calendar.
PepsiCo Food Ventures marketing vice president Anshul Khanna described Doritos Loaded as “one of our fastest growing meal propositions,” positioning the brand’s core goal as expanding the product from snack recognition into a meal-oriented behavior, with Formula 1 serving as the context where intensity and novelty can justify bold creative.
What this means for marketers
Celebrity and sports partnerships often fail when they stop at awareness. This campaign is structured to connect attention to repeatable consumption cues, using recipes and live experiences as the mechanism.
- Treat the film as the entry point, not the whole plan
The commercial introduces the pairing and sets the tone, but the eight-recipe roadmap creates a content runway that can be repackaged across social, retail, and experiential moments. - Build a “proof loop” consumers can participate in
Recipes give audiences a way to reenact the campaign at home, which can help translate entertainment into behavior, especially when the food is presented as assemble-able and shareable. - Use event calendars to justify sustained creative iteration
Tying activations to the race season makes it easier to pace releases, rotate limited items, and keep the story moving without having to invent a new platform idea every week. - Design partnerships that work in multiple environments
The inclusion of restaurant and hospitality operators suggests the brand is planning for contexts where consumers encounter food decisions differently than they do at home. That can expand impact without changing the core creative concept. - Make the talent fit the product job-to-be-done
Ramsay is used as the authority for “meal creation,” while Russell signals speed and Formula 1 credibility. That division of roles keeps the celebrity choice tied to what the product is trying to become.
Stepping back, the campaign reflects a practical direction in brand building: use premium attention moments to open the door, then rely on scalable, repeatable formats (recipes, limited menu items, fan zones) to sustain recall and encourage trial.
For teams planning similar activations, the key question is not “who is the biggest name we can book,” but “what repeatable behavior can we attach to the partnership after the first viewing.”
