John Hogan
Hogan at a promotional event for Rush in 2013
Born	(1943-05-05)May 5, 1943 Sydney, Australia
Died	January 3, 2021(2021-01-03) (aged 77) Verbier, Switzerland
Occupation(s)	Advertising and motorsport executive
Spouse	Anne Couchman ​ (m. 1966)​
Children	2

John Scott Hogan (nicknamed "Hogie") was an Australian advertising and motorsport executive who led Marlboro's Formula One sponsorship program from 1973 to 2002. As the chief financial backer of McLaren Racing and, subsequently, Scuderia Ferrari, he helped grow Formula One into a financial powerhouse. He aided the early careers of several F1 superstars, including James Hunt, Gilles Villeneuve, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, and Mika Häkkinen. He spearheaded McLaren's rise to prominence and helped bankroll Michael Schumacher's dominant Ferrari teams at the turn of the 21st century. He also briefly served as sporting and commercial director of the Jaguar F1 team.

John Scott Hogan was born in Sydney, Australia on May 5, 1943 to Justin, an Australian Army officer, and Enid (Kirkham) Hogan.^[1] The family moved around Asia several times for Justin's various postings.^[2] Hogan grew interested in motor racing at a young age after watching racing movies and reading an Autocar article about Stirling Moss.^[2][3]

Hogan attended Cannock House, a boarding school in England, where he befriended actor Malcolm McDowell.^[4][3] The two friends visited Aintree to watch Moss win the 1957 British Grand Prix.^[2][1]

In 2003, The Guardian incorrectly reported that Hogan was the brother of actor Paul Hogan, who portrayed Crocodile Dundee in the eponymous film series.^[5][6] Australian racing magazine Auto Action concluded that Paul Hogan "may, at best, have been a distant relation".^[7]

Hogan moved to London and entered the advertising business, working for Nestlé and then various independent advertising agencies.^[8] In the early 1970s, he made an early foray into motorsport with Erwin Wasey, helping its client Coca-Cola fund James Hunt and Gerry Birrell's junior careers.^[9][3]

In 1973, Hogan joined Marlboro manufacturer Philip Morris (PM)'s European office in Lausanne, Switzerland.^[10][11] Marlboro felt that Formula One's macho image of the time meshed well with its existing cowboy advertising, personified by the "Marlboro Man".^[1] Under Hogan, Marlboro became "by far the dominant sponsorship presence in F1", and its name was "synonymous with motor racing".^[8] According to Joe Saward, Hogan, Bernie Ecclestone, and Elf's François Guiter [fr] were "the primary forces in creating modern F1, not only by providing money for the sport, but also by putting together great teams".^[3]

Hogan was not the first advertising executive to link tobacco with Formula One. In 1968, the sport lifted its ban on corporate sponsorship unrelated to the auto industry, prompting John Love to rename his racing team after the Gunston cigarette brand in time for the season opener at Kyalami.^[12] By the next race, Colin Chapman's Team Lotus signed Imperial Tobacco (the manufacturer of Gold Leaf and John Player Special) as its title sponsor, entrenching the practice in the sport.^[13][14]

However, Hogan helped forge a link between tobacco and Formula One's growing presence on television.^[1] European governments began outlawing tobacco television commercials in the late 1960s.^[13] Including corporate decals on an F1 car's livery allowed tobacco companies to get their brands on television without violating the ban on purchasing ad time, and Hogan explained that he saw F1 as a way "to make ourselves visible ... before the black curtain came down".^[15] To maximise Marlboro's exposure on television, Hogan hired ad men who "deliberately attempted to elevate the principal drivers from mere heroes to superhero status".^[16]

Other tobacco companies followed PM and Imperial's lead, "driv[ing] Formula One into an era where big-name corporate sponsors were essential to fund technological advances and soaring salaries".^[1] Tobacco money became so influential in Formula One that in 2005, journalist Dieter Rencken found that every World Drivers' Champion since 1984 had been sponsored by a tobacco company.^[12] Formula One Group chief Bernie Ecclestone told Tony Blair that no other industry would match tobacco's financial commitment to the sport, prompting Blair to (unsuccessfully) ask European authorities to exempt F1 from tobacco advertising restrictions.^[17][18] In addition, Marlboro and Elf's financial clout allowed the two sponsors to play peacemaker during the FISA–FOCA war.^[19] With sponsorships on both sides of the conflict (Marlboro was the title sponsor for both the FOCA-affiliated McLaren and the FISA-affiliated Alfa Romeo in the early 1980s), Marlboro took "an inevitable neutral line",^[20] but Hogan pushed the parties to reach a compromise.^[21]

To avoid European restrictions on cigarette advertising, which required F1 teams to blank out tobacco decals on their liveries, cigarette brands like Marlboro encouraged Formula One to race in new markets like Bahrain.^[22] (Left: Photo of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari at the 2003 British Grand Prix. Right: Photo of the Ferrari team during the 2006 Bahrain Grand Prix.)

The tobacco industry also engineered Formula One's emergence as a global competition—once again in response to European crackdowns on cigarette advertising in F1. France adopted a law restricting tobacco marketing at sporting events (the loi Évin) in 1991, and other European countries eventually passed similar laws.^[17] In response, F1 added many non-European circuits to the race calendar,^[22] aided by the tobacco companies, which (according to FIA president Max Mosley) put up the money to build new circuits in the Far East.^[17] In addition, European countries that imposed nominal fines for tobacco advertising, like Italy,^[17] were rewarded with multiple races per year.^[22]

Hogan also worked with Ecclestone to market Formula One around the world; he was credited with the invention of grid girls.^[1][23] In addition, he was chosen to represent F1's sponsors on the FIA's F1 Commission,^[2][3] which wrote the rules for the sport.^[1]

One of Hogan's first moves was to switch Marlboro's sponsorship away from venerable BRM,^[9] whose days he felt were numbered.^[24] The company had already begun sponsoring Frank Williams Racing Cars, the predecessor of the more well-known Williams Racing. As part of the arrangement, the FWRC cars were renamed "Iso-Marlboro" for the 1973 season. However, the Iso-Marlboro was unsuccessful, prompting Hogan to look elsewhere.^[3]

Ahead of the 1974 season, Hogan approached 1972 champion Emerson Fittipaldi with a deal: in exchange for sponsoring Fittipaldi, he would pay Fittipaldi's salary at whatever team the free-agent Fittipaldi chose. After meeting with Brabham and Tyrrell, Fittipaldi chose relative upstarts McLaren. Aided by Fittipaldi's talent and Marlboro money, McLaren won its first Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in 1974.^[25]

Hogan's Marlboro remained with McLaren for nearly a quarter-century, during which the team won nine Drivers' Championships and seven Constructors' Championships. Following Fittipaldi's surprise departure from McLaren ahead of the 1976 season, Hogan arranged for his old friend James Hunt to replace Fittipaldi; Hunt promptly won the 1976 Drivers' Championship.^[9] (Hogan admitted in 2018 that he had actually preferred Jacky Ickx for the open seat, but McLaren wanted Hunt, and he complied.^[26]) A heavy smoker with a glamorous lifestyle, Hunt was viewed in retrospect as an ideal pitchman for the Marlboro brand,^[15] although it was later revealed that he preferred Rothmans cigarettes and merely pretended to smoke Marlboros.^[1] In at least one case, Marlboro placed a driver with McLaren because of the driver's personal ties to the tobacco industry: Philip Morris' leadership favoured Andrea de Cesaris, whose father was a PM distributor.^[27] However, de Cesaris spent only one season (1981) with McLaren.^[28]

Under Hogan, PM set up the Marlboro World Championship Team, a predecessor of the modern-day driver academy, to provide financial support to promising junior drivers.^[3] Hogan's scouting network funneled several talented juniors to McLaren, but his eye for talent caused tensions with team principal Teddy Mayer, whom he eventually unseated. In 1977, Hogan (at Hunt's suggestion) gave Gilles Villeneuve his Formula One debut with McLaren. However, Mayer released Villeneuve to Ferrari in the middle of the season, over Hogan's objections.^[29] In 1980, Hogan signed future four-time world champion Alain Prost on Guiter's recommendation, resolving to make Prost a McLaren driver even if Mayer (who wanted to sign Kevin Cogan) disagreed.^[29] Mayer relented and signed the Frenchman after an excellent performance in testing,^[30] but Prost had a falling-out with Mayer and left McLaren after his rookie year.^[31]

Frustrated with McLaren's declining performance, Hogan arranged for Ron Dennis to join, and eventually replace, Mayer in 1981.^[9][8] Financed by Marlboro money, Dennis and John Barnard introduced the revolutionary carbon-fibre monocoque chassis to Formula One. At the time, the McLaren MP4/1 was considered "the most advanced and expensive race car in the world".^[27] Dennis led the team to seven constructors' titles and ten drivers' titles, all but four (1998 (2), 1999, 2008) with Marlboro. Due to Dennis' successes at McLaren, team CEO Zak Brown (a former protege of Hogan) said that Hogan is "probably as responsible as anyone at McLaren [for it] being where it is today".^[32]

Hogan continued to attract elite drivers during the Dennis era, aided by the now-retired James Hunt, whom Hogan hired as a Marlboro advisor and driver coach in 1982.^[33] Hogan lured Niki Lauda out of retirement in 1982^[3] and brokered Prost's return to McLaren for 1984,^[34][35] sealing a driver pairing that won two Drivers' Championships and two Constructors' Championships. In addition, he signed up-and-coming junior driver Ayrton Senna (who later won three Drivers' Championships with McLaren) to a $10,000 sponsorship contract.^[1] Although the contract purportedly included an option to sign Senna to McLaren's senior team,^[2] McLaren opted for a Prost-Lauda pairing in 1984,^[34] and Senna did not join McLaren until 1988. After Senna proceeded to win three Drivers' Championships with McLaren, Hogan's Marlboro paid Senna's massive-for-its-day $1 million-per-race salary in 1993.^[2][36]

Finally, Hogan and Hunt encouraged McLaren to sign Marlboro-sponsored driver Mika Häkkinen.^[3][8] Hogan stopped funding McLaren in 1997 due to his disillusionment with the first two years of the McLaren-Mercedes combination,^[36] but Häkkinen eventually led McLaren to two Drivers' Championships and one Constructors' Championship.^[3]

Realising that auto manufacturers could outspend even tobacco companies if sufficiently committed to the sport, Hogan gradually cultivated a relationship with Italian automaker Ferrari and its racing team, Scuderia Ferrari.^[8] (Hogan recalled that during the McLaren-Honda years, Honda Racing F1 was contributing three times as much money to the team as Marlboro.^[37]) When McLaren released Gilles Villeneuve during his rookie year, Hogan arranged for the Canadian to join Ferrari in 1978.^[3] Villeneuve eventually became a personal favourite of Enzo Ferrari.^[38] Even so, Hogan had to wait another four years before becoming a Ferrari sponsor in 1982.^[2] It was "the first time the famous Italian team had agreed to sponsorship from a non-motor industry source".^[6][2]

Hogan brokered Michael Schumacher's 1996 move from Benetton (whose title sponsor was Marlboro rival Mild Seven) to Ferrari^[15][39] and paid Schumacher's salary.^[40] In 1997, Marlboro became Ferrari's title sponsor after ending its sponsorship of rival McLaren.^[2] Marlboro spent as much as £70m/year on the Italian team; one writer commented that "so vast were its resources it would come to effectively supplant Fiat as the race team's parent".^[15] The then-struggling Ferrari team went on to win eight Constructors' Championships in ten years from 1999 to 2008.

Hogan retired from Marlboro in 2002.^[10] Although Ferrari was still F1's dominant team, the sport was phasing out tobacco advertising. In 1997, the European Commission announced a ban on tobacco advertising in sports starting in 2006,^[41][42] by which point only three teams had cigarette companies as their title sponsors.^[43]

After a year working as an advisor for Vodafone, Hogan joined Jaguar Racing for the 2003 season.^[44] That year, the team abolished the position of team principal and split the duties between Hogan (sporting and commercial director) and David Pitchforth (managing director).^[6][45] At Jaguar, Hogan signed up-and-coming driver Mark Webber to replace Eddie Irvine.^[2] However, he left the beleaguered outfit within a year,^[8] and the team was sold to Red Bull a year later.^[2]

During the Hogan years, Marlboro's sponsorship work extended beyond Formula One. In Hogan's native Australia, Marlboro backed Peter Brock and the Holden Dealer Team, as well as Nissan Motorsport, Glenn Seton Racing, and Stone Brothers Racing.^[7] In the United States, Hogan encouraged McLaren to start an IndyCar team in the mid-1980s, but John Barnard scuppered the deal because the IndyCar and Formula One chassis regulations were too different.^[11] Ultimately, Marlboro sponsored Team Penske's open-wheel driving operations until the late 2000s.^[7] At the end of the 1992 F1 season, Hogan arranged for Ayrton Senna to test a Penske IndyCar at Firebird Raceway.^[46]

Hogan was portrayed by Patrick Baladi in Ron Howard's Rush (2013), a film about the Hunt–Lauda rivalry.^[47]

On January 3, 2021, Hogan passed away from complications of COVID-19 in a hospital near his home in Verbier, Switzerland. He was survived by his wife Annie (née Couchman) and his two children, Andrew and Ally.^[1][10]