Ferrari's underwhelming special livery for this weekend's Miami Grand Prix continues a frustrating trend in modern Formula 1.
The team had teased a blue-heavy livery that would run on its SF-24 in Miami to celebrate its new title sponsorship with American technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP).
But now the livery has been unveiled and there's an all too familiar sense of 'is that it?'.
The Miami GP livery features a blue front and rear wing as well as a blue halo, wheel rims, rear view mirrors and race numbers. There are also blue patches on the top of the sidepods.
These are actually two shades of blue that represent the tones Azzurro La Plata and Azzurro Dino and were, as Ferrari describes, "part of daily life in Maranello for many years and are now coming back after an absence of around 50 years".
Blue has always been a popular colour for Ferrari, even on our cars 🔵🔴
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 30, 2024
How 🔥 do these look?! 🤩#MiamiGP 🇺🇸 #F1 pic.twitter.com/3R7a9c2GGV
Both colours are steeped in Ferrari's history and it's a lovely nod to its lesser-remembered successes in the first two decades of F1.
But it doesn't go anywhere near far enough with the majority of the car still in the traditional red. The placement of the blue feels like an afterthought too, rather than something properly integrated into the design.
That's frustrating when completely blue overalls for the drivers were revealed ahead of the full livery launch and multiple teasers have emphasised the blue. It's not too dissimilar from Alpine teasing a pink-heavy special livery for the first three races of 2024, only to reveal a livery even more stripped back and less exciting than what it produced for early 2022 and 2023.
There's not even an element of weight saving involved in this either. Ferrari arguably won F1 launch season's livery game with a sleek, evolved version of its traditional livery. But it's failing to make an impact with its in-season one-off.
Ferrari had a chance to do something properly different. Something that would have generated a huge amount of attention for its new title sponsorship - especially when HP is the whole reason it's doing this.
Because it's Ferrari it has the potential to be even more impactful. It's the team you'd expect least likely to deviate from its colours - so much so that Stoffel Vandoorne and And Colossally That's History! host Matt Bishop's 'it's red' meme has become a staple of The Race's social media output. Ferrari has changed so much from some of the corporate stiffness that's stifled some of its character before. Instead of further breaking down that perception, this livery only adds to it.
Stuck with it for life 😂
— Stoffel Vandoorne (@svandoorne) April 25, 2024
Of course, on-track performance is the number one priority for Ferrari this weekend, but if it does end up challenging Red Bull at one of three tracks Carlos Sainz identified as potential hotspots, then wouldn't it be far better to be doing that challenging decked-out in full blue as a proper statement for its new title sponsor?
This halfway house just makes it feel more like it's going to be a footnote in the history of marginally different F1 liveries we've had in recent years, rather than a monumental 'do you remember that race where Ferrari was blue?' that this could have been.
