The Last New Livery of 2012 is also the First New Livery of 2012

March 6 2012
by Seb Patrick
5 comments

HRT, then. Is this lovely, or is it hideous? I can’t tell. I think it has elements of both.

The initial joyous thought of “Wow, that’s different!” gives way to disappointment when you start to scrutinise it a bit, I think. There seems to be no logical reason behind the choice of colours – there’s certainly no new sponsor mandating it – and so it can’t help but feel a bit arbitrary, or like they saw the unused 2007 Force India livery and thought “Hey, it’s a shame that never made it to a race, let’s do a tribute to it!” I also don’t know what the heck the fluorescent paint splash on the inside of the rear wing endplate is all about – although I suppose we should be thankful that KH-7, whoever they are, aren’t paying enough to get the whole car painted that way. I also question the way the two colours have been applied and distributed – it looks good on the engine cover, but less so on the side of the monocoque.

Despite all this, though, it’s not that bad on the whole. I loved last year’s design at launch, but it grew old quite quickly, and ditching the “This Could Be You” nonsense was long overdue before the season had even ended, so it’s good that it hasn’t been carried over to this year. As it is, while it could do with more sponsors, it doesn’t do a bad job of looking smart without – and the one main sponsor they do have actually works surprisingly well, despite TATA’s blue ostensibly clashing with the colour scheme. The amount of white, though, means it’s successfully and cleanly separated – a lesson from which the more cluttered Sauber could surely take note.

It’s not a look that screams “This is a team that’s going places”, or even “This is a team that has a coherent visual identity”, but thankfully it’s also not a look that says “We couldn’t be bothered coming up with a new livery”, and for that I have to applaud them, given how utterly barren this year has been for entirely new paint jobs.

The less said about those uniforms, though, the better. Yeesh.

5 Comments

vert

March 6, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Reply

I absolutely love that maroon colour on cars and I really wish that it had been the main colour on the car. That and with gold and white as minor colours would have been brilliant. I also wish they had chosen a different gold. I think they went down the wrong route with that as Renault did last season. I had a chrome-gold colour pictured in my head and kinda wish that had happened.

Glad to see a new livery, but had way more potential.

Are you going to do a bit on helmets again Seb? How about doing one on the overalls to?

Jake

March 6, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Reply

Isn’t the inspiration clear? She-Ra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She-ra

vert

March 6, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Reply

This is what I had in mind with the gold:

http://tinypic.com/r/73gfpy/5

Norman

March 6, 2012 at 4:43 pm
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It’s an improvement on last season, but I do think it would have looked slicker if they’d only had the gold stripes on the white car. The Maroon makes it look untidy.

[fliP]

May 11, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Reply

HRT have changed their livery a bit: http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/bilder/zoom.php?c=1205spa&d=2&b=1336738812&sort=1