The reaction to McLaren’s one-off Gulf livery for the Monaco Grand Prix shows why Formula 1 needs more specials like this, and should seriously consider how to make that happen.
A big part of the popularity of a design like McLaren’s is how rare it is. But there’s a middle ground between these ideas being barely utilised, and liveries being changed so routinely the occasion becomes unremarkable.
“At this point we only intend to run it at Monaco,” says McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.
“If you’re going to have a special livery, you need to keep it special.
“It’s something that isn’t done that often in Formula 1.
“Sometimes when there’s variations of livery, it’s a little bit of a tweak here and there, so I’m quite proud of the opportunity Gulf has presented us as McLaren to try and continue to lead the way in innovating how we can engage fans in the sport.
“This is a good example.”
McLaren’s homage to the famous Gulf Racing colours is a rarity but at the same time it continues a wonderful recent F1 ‘trend’.
It’s the third special livery in three seasons, after Mercedes’ white-silver scheme at the 2019 German Grand Prix and Ferrari’s old-school burgundy look at Mugello last year.
Personal preference will dictate how you rate the respective efforts but broadly speaking McLaren’s design is better than the other two because it evokes such strong memories beyond F1.
Celebrating heritage is a lovely touch and Mercedes and Ferrari did that in different ways. But the sentiment that comes with nostalgia is very powerful and that’s what McLaren’s tapped into.
Unsurprisingly, McLaren’s reveal has caused quite the stir. So, could F1 make this happen more? Should it? And how?
Yes, yes, and by encouraging teams to do this while avoiding it becoming an overused gimmick.
“We need to [do this more],” says Brown, “whether – and other sports do it as well – everyone does it at the same time, or when you’re in your home country or you have a reason or an anniversary.
“I think we don’t want to confuse the fans and lose our identity. But at the same time, I think to do something a few times a year that’s special, I think creates some excitement and some additional engagement with the fans.”
He’s absolutely right. Some championships, such as Australia’s Supercars series and NASCAR, have retro events where every team is encouraged to embrace a livery of old.
I don’t think that would work so well in F1. Partly because it would probably rely on reimagined cigarette-packet liveries, partly because commercial agreements are so tight that wholesale changes might not be as achievable for every team, but also because there is a better way to do it that would give each team more control and generate more focused stories.
Supercars and NASCAR are national championships where, by and large, individual events have the same amount of significance to all teams – so it doesn’t matter if one is arbitrarily judged to be ‘the retro event’.
In F1, the teams have different origins, different histories, different priorities. Tapping into home races or anniversaries is an obvious route in.
But however it’s done, if F1 encourages teams to go down the route of planning one special livery a season, it could generate 10 easy, popular and worthwhile stories a year.
It’s a great way to tell a story and it’s something unique to celebrate without making it feel overdone.
“We want to keep it limited and special, so for the right reasons, the right brand alignment, the right venue,” Brown says.
“We have our 60th year anniversary coming up in a couple of years. And I hope other teams follow our lead because I’m excited to see fans’ reaction.
“Then at Monaco it’s going to be the star of the show.”
Since the Ferrari Mugello special in 2020 I’ve been convinced that Honda’s farewell home race in Japan this year should be marked by AlphaTauri switching to a Japanese flag livery as an homage to Honda’s first F1 race winner from 1965.
I also think that as Williams’s new owner Dorilton has been keen to pay tribute to the team’s founding family, some kind of design honouring Sir Frank at the British Grand Prix would make an awful lot of sense.
And on the purely promotional side, why not Red Bull at the Red Bull Ring finally using its never-raced, debut testing livery in the design of its drinks can?
There are plenty of ways to create a unique livery and almost certainly room for classics to be revived as well.
“The proper old school ones would be pretty awesome,” reckons McLaren’s Lando Norris.
“It’s nice that we’re the only ones doing it [in Monaco], then it’s just more eyes on us. For one race or something, make it a bit more exciting, a bit more fun, it would be cool to see F1 do something like that.
“Especially when you’ve got like Williams and Ferrari. I mean Ferrari will just be red! But you have a lot of teams which had pretty awesome liveries and very unique liveries over the years. It would be cool if everyone kind of came up with their own one.”
We often hear around launch season that the hype around liveries is misplaced. ‘Colour schemes have never won races’, or something along those lines.
But liveries are important. Anything that engages a fanbase and attracts attention for sponsors has serious value even if it’s often intangible.
“I’m aware it’s another expense for every team,” said Daniel Ricciardo.
“But obviously that aside, for everything to be a throwback, not only our race suits but just our casual wear around the track and down to the team hats and all that, to properly do it, and for everyone to get involved in, that’d be cool.”
F1’s had a decent shift in liveries in the last few years, especially in 2021 given the respective rebrandings of the teams now known as Alpine and Aston Martin, Williams’s divisive new look, and Haas operating as a mobile Russian flag. Even Ferrari’s moved to a two-tone colour scheme.
Before that, Mercedes adopted the all-black anti-racism livery for 2020, the same year Toro Rosso morphed into AlphaTauri. Sauber absorbed the Alfa Romeo identity a couple of seasons earlier.
McLaren and Red Bull are the outliers but we’ll let the Woking team off given its switch to papaya for 2018 and this Gulf business.
The underlying point of all that is that nine of the 10 teams have changed their look at some point within the last three years.
What’s stopping those makeovers becoming more of an occasion?
