Martini Williams: The Livery Rumour Everyone Wants To Believe

A little behind the curve on this – apologies, and I’m also due to write something on the Caterham and Marussia, which I’ll do when going over all the teams’ liveries in detail shortly – but let’s cover it anyway…

So the rumours have been gathering pace (to the extent that Autosport have run a story that all but confirms it) that Martini are indeed going to be title sponsors of the Williams team this season… and it’s something that seems to be making F1 fans everywhere very happy. Let’s face it, even those people (fools as they are) who don’t obsessively care about liveries love it when a classic design of yesteryear makes a comeback – a fact that both Lotus teams were keen to exploit when trying to be the first to successfully launch a reprise of the black-and-gold John Player Special.

When it comes to Martini, there have actually been a number of different main colour schemes that have been based around the Italian drinks company’s famous coloured stripes. The one that most people have zeroed in on is a predominantly white car, with the blue and red stripes across it – this is actually a colour scheme that’s been most commonly seen in sportscar and rally racing, although it was used by Brabham in their first year with Martini in 1975.

 From an F1 point of view, though, it’s also been seen on a green car (thanks to Lotus in 1979), and perhaps most memorably on the red Brabham of the mid-to-late 70s. It’s this livery that I personally would be quite keen to make a comeback – but given the reaction to the last time Williams had a red car, it doesn’t seem hugely likely they’ll go down their route.

 

As some fan mockups have shown, the Martini branding would look quite good on Williams’ existing shade of blue, but an apparent leak of an image of team merchandise would seem to confirm that the cars will indeed be predominantly white:

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of such a classic livery has brought the best out of those who like to design mockup cars, and it’s safe to say that if the Williams looks anything like any of these, it’s sure to be a corker:

However it ends up looking when it’s finally launched, it’s safe to say that if this linkup is genuine, then Williams have put some much-needed life into current F1 livery discussion. We can only hope that McLaren are paying close attention when considering how to dress their Honda-powered cars in 2015…