Team Brady, owned by NFL legend Tom Brady, has been named the 2025 E1 Blue Impact Champion at a ceremony hosted at the BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Distillery. Recognised for its Race for Change programme, the team linked racing success to ocean restoration, removing 19,500kg of plastic while securing the E1 season double.
As electric powerboats cut silently across the water and sustainability takes centre stage in elite sport, the 2025 season of the UIM E1 World Championship closed with a powerful statement about what purpose-led competition can achieve. At the heart of that statement was BOMBAY SAPPHIRE®, the Official Gin Partner of E1, which served as the Presenting Partner of the Blue Impact Championship, an award designed to recognise environmental leadership within the world’s first all-electric powerboat racing series. The championship finale, hosted at the iconic BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Distillery at Laverstoke Mill, brought together sport, innovation and environmental responsibility in a setting that embodied the very values the award celebrates.
At a special ceremony held at the distillery, Team Brady, owned by NFL legend Tom Brady, was named the 2025 E1 Blue Impact Champion. The accolade recognised the team’s outstanding, season-long contribution to protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems, reinforcing E1’s ambition to use sport as a catalyst for positive environmental change. The award was presented with the support of a distinguished jury that included Rodolfo Nervi, Vice President of Corporate Sustainability and Global Safety & Quality at Bacardi, who also lent his sustainability expertise to the judging process.
The Blue Impact Championship is a distinctive feature of E1, the global all-electric raceboat championship that places environmental action at the core of its sporting vision. Unlike traditional motorsport accolades that focus solely on performance, the Blue Impact title honours teams that demonstrate measurable, creative and inclusive environmental initiatives throughout the season. It reflects E1’s broader mission to accelerate the protection of oceans and raise awareness about the fragile state of marine ecosystems.
Team Brady’s victory was notable not only for its symbolism but for the scale and clarity of its impact. In addition to being crowned 2025 E1 Champions of the Water on the racing front, the team achieved a rare season double by securing the Blue Impact Championship through its Race for Change programme. Delivered in partnership with organisations including 4ocean Foundation, OceanR, OMP and WaterAid, the initiative exemplified how high-performance sport can be aligned with tangible environmental outcomes.
Central to the judges’ decision was the team’s performance-linked environmental commitment. For every championship point Team Brady earned during the 2025 season, 100 kilograms of plastic were removed from the ocean—an amount roughly equivalent to the average annual plastic waste generated by one person. Over the course of the season, this translated into the removal of 19,500 kilograms of plastic from marine environments, offering a clear, measurable link between sporting success and environmental restoration.
The jury praised Team Brady for delivering tangible environmental action that aligned closely with E1’s purpose-led philosophy. The panel brought together leading voices in marine conservation, sustainability and corporate responsibility, including Jan Pachner, Secretary General of the One Ocean Foundation; Alexandra Cousteau, Founder of Oceans2050; and Marina Anselme, Secretary General of the MSC Foundation. Together, they evaluated initiatives from all nine E1 teams based on their impact on local communities and marine ecosystems, the strength of stakeholder collaboration, and the creativity, inclusivity and ambition of their environmental programmes.
Beyond metrics, the jury also assessed how effectively teams engaged fans and partners to inspire broader action, ensuring that sustainability was not treated as a peripheral add-on but as an integral part of the sporting narrative. The Blue Impact Championship is designed to challenge teams to go beyond racing, to protect fragile marine habitats and contribute meaningfully to the restoration of aquatic ecosystems. Throughout the 2025 season, teams collectively built a portfolio of initiatives that reflected diverse approaches to purpose-led sport, underscoring the championship’s collaborative ethos.
The choice of venue for the award announcement added further resonance. The BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Distillery at Laverstoke Mill is widely recognised as a landmark of sustainable design. Created by globally celebrated designer Thomas Heatherwick, the distillery is rated “Outstanding” by BREEAM and recycles or converts into energy more than 99% of its waste. The brand’s commitment to sustainability extends to its product, crafted using a unique blend of ten botanicals sourced from sustainably certified suppliers. As part of the Bacardi family of brands, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® has positioned sustainability as a core business principle rather than a marketing afterthought.
The partnership between BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® and E1 is rooted in the brand’s Step Into The Blue™ global campaign, which invites people to immerse themselves in a vibrant, blue world while celebrating the beauty of the moment. At its core, the collaboration reflects a shared belief that innovation, craftsmanship and care for the planet’s natural “blues” can coexist—and that electric sport can play a role in accelerating positive environmental change both on and off the water.
For Tom Brady, the Blue Impact Championship represented a deeply meaningful achievement. Speaking after the ceremony, he described winning the E1 Championship for a second time as special, but said earning the inaugural Blue Impact title carried particular significance. From the outset, Brady explained, the ambition shared with team principals Ben and Joe was to win both on and off the water. The Race for Change platform was conceived to deliver measurable environmental outcomes rather than symbolic gestures, a philosophy that ultimately defined the team’s season.
E1’s leadership echoed that sentiment. Carlos Duarte, Chief Scientist at E1, congratulated Team Brady on sealing the championship double, describing the win as a powerful expression of the series’ mission. He noted that while competitive success matters, the Blue Impact Championship is the part of E1 where “regardless of who wins, we all win,” as the collective actions of teams demonstrate the potential of sport to drive meaningful environmental impact. Duarte highlighted plastic pollution as one of the most pervasive human pressures on the ocean and praised Team Brady for setting a new benchmark for purpose-driven racing.
From a corporate sustainability perspective, Rodolfo Nervi emphasised why the Blue Impact Championship aligns so closely with BOMBAY SAPPHIRE®’s values. He pointed to the brand’s commitment to protecting biodiversity at the distillery, sustainably sourcing botanicals and achieving Wildlife Habitat Council Certification. Supporting teams that are actively helping to protect the world’s oceans, he said, is a natural extension of that commitment.
For the drivers themselves, the recognition was both professional and personal. Team Brady pilot Sam Coleman described the Race for Change campaign as central to everything the team did during a fiercely competitive season. Witnessing the real-world impact of the initiative, he said, reinforced the belief that success should be measured not only in results but in responsibility. Fellow pilot Emma Kimiläinen echoed that view, highlighting how sustainability, recycling, green energy and innovation align with her own values and with E1’s broader vision.
Kimiläinen pointed to practical initiatives—from team kit made from recycled plastic bottles to raising awareness about access to clean drinking water—as examples of how the programme translated ideals into action. She described the performance-linked partnership with 4ocean as particularly powerful, creating a direct connection between racing excellence and ocean restoration. Looking ahead, she expressed hope that the team could deliver an even greater positive impact in the 2026 season.
As the 2025 E1 season draws to a close, the Blue Impact Championship stands as a reminder that the future of sport may be defined as much by purpose as by performance. Through its partnership with E1, and through Team Brady’s example, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® has helped demonstrate that innovation, sustainability and elite competition can move in the same direction—towards cleaner waters, stronger ecosystems and a more responsible vision of what modern sport can achieve.
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