Hedera (HBAR) has announced a major multi-year partnership with McLaren Racing, the Formula 1 team that won both the drivers' and constructors' championships last year. As part of the deal, Hedera becomes an official partner for McLaren's Formula 1 and IndyCar teams, with plans to connect real-world racing environments with Web3 infrastructure.
The first use case will be a digital collectibles program launched during F1 Grand Prix weekends, with Hedera also powering Arrow McLaren's IndyCar digital collectibles for the upcoming season. Charles Adkins of Hedera stated: "Working with one of the world's most recognized sports brands is a big step for the Hedera ecosystem. It gives us a chance to show what Web3 can look like when it's built on a network people can trust and tied to the experience fans actually want."
This partnership follows a trend of blockchain networks partnering with Formula 1 teams, including Sui with Red Bull Oracle Racing, Tezos with McLaren, and BlockDAG with BWT Alpine. Other crypto companies like OKX, Crypto.com, Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken also have significant Formula 1 marketing presence.
Simultaneously, Hedera is positioning itself in the AI race with a unique technical feature that allows existing Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana private keys to work on Hedera without creating new accounts. This "universal adapter" capability could make Hedera fundamental infrastructure for AI agents needing to interact with multiple blockchain ecosystems.
Despite these developments, HBAR faces market challenges. The token was trading at $0.1080 on January 22, down 20% from its year-to-date high and 65% below its 2025 peak. Technical analysis shows HBAR has formed a descending triangle pattern with support at $0.1037, potentially pointing to further downside toward $0.08500 if broken.
The Canary HBAR ETF has seen robust inflows of $5.58 million this month, higher than December's $3.6 million, bringing cumulative inflows to $89 million and net assets over $57 million. However, Hedera's ecosystem growth has stalled recently, with total value locked falling to $62 million and stablecoin market cap at $52 million.
