What is Formula 1 if not just very fast, mechanical horse racing? Surely I'm not the only one who has asked that question, especially considering the Japanese Grand Prix leg of the 2027 F1 World Championship has just revealed that Cygame's horse girl gacha Umamusume: Pretty Derby has become a founding partner.
What does that mean in practice? Well, according to a press release, founding partners are "the highest tier supporters of the F1 Japanese Grand Prix," where they "bring additional value to the event while helping to shape the direction of its growth. Through marketing, promotional activities, and creating new experiences for fans, Umamusume will continue contributing to the long term growth of the Japanese Grand Prix."
In layman's terms, that'll be a tidy sum of money invested into the Japanese Grand Prix, and in Umamusume's case it also means slapping its name on one of Suzuka Circuit's iconic corners—changing the name from the 130R corner to Umamusume 130R for around a year. Unsurprisingly, there'll also be a bit of Umamusume marketing and branding splashed across a banner or two, though Cygames says that none of it will be on display during the actual Japanese Grand Prix itself.
(I'm also learning today that F1 circuit corners have names. Neat.)
In case you're not familiar with Umamusume's whole schtick, it's an anime-slash-gacha-game all about anthropomorphised horse girls. Ones who are also based on real-life race horses, by the by. The gacha's global release brought tons of eyes onto the franchise last year, and its fans have done an awful lot of good—stuff like donating so much grass to the horse girl's real-life counterparts that it broke the donation website, or raising hundreds of thousands of dollars towards renovating stables.
It's a fun little collaboration between two vastly different sports, and I imagine there's definitely a good chunk of folks who sit in the Venn diagram of "F1 fan" and "horse girl fan". For those who do lie firmly in between those two fandoms, Cygames is also opening a special booth at Suzuka Circuit, as well as a mysterious "special live music performance" taking place on April 10. Considering Umamusume has plenty of original music (since it's also kind of an idol game… it's hard to explain, okay?) I wouldn't be surprised if we'll be hearing a ditty or two from the likes of Silence Suzuka and Special Week.
