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At the start of last year’s roundup, I wrote: “We’re now looking at possibly the most colourful grid since the glory days of 2010. We could still do with some green or orange out there, and several teams really need to find themselves more sponsors; but on the whole, I think things are moving in the right direction, and I also suspect teams are starting to think again a little more about how their visual identity is engaged with by fans. Let’s hope the trend continues positively next year!”

And while there’s still no green car, and some teams do still need some sponsors, I think that’s basically held true. Certainly, if there’s a recurring theme for 2017, “engagement” would be it – several teams have made a statement with their liveries, and for the most part they’ve done so with consideration of what their fans wanted to see.

So without any further ado, let’s run through the teams – once again, I’ve given them a mark out of ten (and I’ve also reminded of last year’s score, for posterity), but rather than running through in championship order, this time I’ve sorted them into a countdown from worst to best.

Haas F1 Team

I was already distinctly unimpressed by Haas’ 2016 livery, so the fact that they’ve made it worse this time around doesn’t exactly fill me with joy. The grey is simply not a strong shade for an F1 car – neither one thing nor the other, it doesn’t have the shine of a silver or the dramatic effect of a full on matt black. There are some nice uses of the secondary red here and there – and it would be scoring a full point lower if it weren’t for the pattern on the shark fin – but coupled with a near-total absence of external sponsors, this just isn’t good enough. They’ve Saubered it.

4/10 (last year: 6/10)

Scuderia Ferrari

It was inevitable that Ferrari would move away from the 1970s-inspired white engine cover look after such an unsuccessful year on the track, but it’s still a shame. This isn’t an especially ugly car, and the white shark fin is a good use of an appalling car design feature; but it could also be just about any Ferrari from the last ten years. It’s also becoming a little too cluttered by sponsors – which may seem a churlish complaint when I’ve criticised other teams for not having them, but they could plaster them on with a little more care. Come on, Ferrari – what say you to a darker red and going back to black wings? You know it makes sense.

5/10 (last year: 7/10)

Williams Martini Racing

Yep, okay – this is the year we start to dock marks for it not changing. Come on, Williams – it’s a lovely set of colours, but it’s not 2014 any more, you need to do a little more to stand out in 2017. This has had a few tweaks since its initial introduction – the Rexona logo on the sidepod really helped, as does this year’s addition of JCB to the rear wing endplate – but it would be lovely to see them mix it up a bit more strongly next year.

6/10 (last year: 7/10)

Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport

Point gained on last year for reducing the amount of black and improving the way the turquoise is applied. Point taken back off for still being essentially the same livery, and for the fact that the casual observer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between every Merc since they started winning titles. It is what it is.

6/10 (last year: 6/10)

Sahara Force India F1 Team

You might have expected me to give a higher mark to Force India given the dramatic surprise of their new pink livery – and indeed, for the fact that they’re using a colour that’s basically never been seen on the grid before. But I’m reserving judgement until we see it on track. Yes, the relaunch gets them a lot of kudos – they would have been sitting flat bottom of this list with the previous effort – but I’m still not certain of just how good that shade of pink is going to look, and whether it’s going to look slightly washed out. I love that they’ve made the grid brighter, I’m just not sure this is an especially good-looking car in and of itself.

7/10 (last year: 5/10)

Red Bull Racing

No major changes from last year, and while the matt colour is still very sharp (it grew on me more as the season went on), they’ve been somewhat overshadowed by their sister team this year. But this is a stronger visual identity than they had throughout the Vettel years, so I’m happy to see them stick with it – for now. Just treat Williams as a cautionary tale.

7/10 (last year: 8/10)

Renault Sport Formula One Team

After spending last year’s pre-season seemingly unable to decide whether to have a black car or a yellow car, Renault have finally done what we all knew they should have all along: have a black and yellow car. Well, actually, in this writer’s view they should have a black and yellow and white car, but this will do until then. Again, much will depend on how this looks out on track – last year’s yellow had a tendency to look flatly orange on some tracks, and spectacularly vididly yellow at others – and it would have been nice to see the colours mixing across the car a little more, rather than essentially being split in two (aside from on the top down view, where the yellow stripes look fantastic). But these are nitpicks – it’s still basically what we want to see from a Renault.

8/10 (last year: 7/10)

Sauber F1 Team

Force India may have made a late play for this year’s “Didn’t see it coming” stakes, but it’s still a title that’s claimed by Sauber – it can’t be underestimated just what it means for this team to run a livery with a bit of style and invention. Aside from the fact that the colours are just lovely (never mind the jibes about it looking like a Ligier or a packet of Embassy Regal, it does so in a good way), this really gets the marks for addressing a specific comment I’d made about the last couple of years (“That blue would look better if it was metallic”). Take heed, Other Teams.

8/10 (last year: 5/10)

McLaren Honda Formula 1 Team

It may not be the exact orange McLaren we were hoping for, but who cares? It’s an orange McLaren. It’s basically this website’s raison d’etre. And actually, while I might have liked to see just an entirely orange car with black/grey sponsors on it, like the fabled West testing livery, last year’s Renault showed how such an approach can actually look kind of dated. This is a 2017 livery for a 2017 car, and I actually really like the design philosophy (did you spot that it’s basically a giant version of McLaren’s speed motif? DID YOU?) It’ll look even better with a title sponsor, but for now let’s just enjoy what might be the greatest discrepancy between livery quality and on-track performance since the 1997 MasterCard Lola.

9/10 (last year: 6/10)

Scuderia Toro Rosso

She is beauty, she is grace, she will probably never win a race. But in the championship of 2017 liveries, there is only one winner. This is utterly magnificent, it’s almost certainly my favourite livery since the 2010 Lotus, and I just can’t stop looking at it. Boom, metallic Prost-style blue. Boom, shiny silver sponsor logos. Boom, random bright red bits. When it was rumoured that Toro Rosso were finally going to change their livery this year, I assumed I’d only be happy with a “Sugar Free” light blue. I was wrong. And I can’t wait to see how it looks at Singapore.

10/10 (last year: 6/10)

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Just like last year, when Renault suddenly switched from their launch black to a vibrant yellow (and, sort of, when McLaren switched from their rubbish 2015 job to a slightly less rubbish one a few races in), Force India have thrown us all a curveball a week and a bit before the season kicks off by unveiling a completely different colour scheme from the one they initially launched.

A pink one.

Now, unlike those previous examples, this one hasn’t come about as a result of a response to fan criticism – although I do wonder if the lukewarm reception their mostly silver and quite boring paint job had received was a contributing factor. Not that I’m suggesting that Force India read F1 Colours, of course, but Renault obviously do, so you never know. Anyway, instead, this colour scheme is as a result of a new sponsorship linkup with “water technology specialists” BWT. And while I don’t know what a water technology specialist does, I certainly know – thanks to this livery launch – that BWT are one, and I expect that’s what they were banking on.

Interestingly, pink doesn’t actually feature in BWT’s own blue corporate identity – but there is a precedent for them running this colour in the DTM series. And so, presumably Force India have decided to take this opportunity to make a big old PR splash (er, no pun intended) by following suit. And they’ve certainly succeeded.

As far as the livery itself goes… well, while I fully admire (and support) the addition of a new and bright colour to the grid (and the removal of some more of its silver), I’m not entirely sold on the design. The shade of pink is a bit washed out – it’s a colour that we don’t often see on the grid, but if we’re going to, I’d prefer it to be in a more vibrant hue, such as that seen on Damon Hill’s 1992 Brabham. And while all the other sponsors have been shaded in to match, BWT’s logo jumps out in a quite clashy way – although again, maybe that’s deliberate, as you certainly can’t miss who the standout sponsor is meant to be.

To be fair, though, this is just one rendered image – we haven’t seen how it looks on the track, and the team have described it as a “matt” finish, so there’s a good chance it could still look spectacular under racing light conditions.

It’s also of note that the team have managed to attract a new major – and livery-altering – sponsor in this way (I wonder if it’s made McLaren look on enviously?), particularly when you consider that it’s not really something the team have done in their current guise (while their cars have been covered in logos, they’ve almost all been Vijay Mallya-owned brands), nor indeed when they were Spyker or Midland, nor even in the last couple of years as Jordan. Is this a positive movement for the sport’s commercial future? Is it in some way inspired by the “new era” of Liberty ownership? Will more teams follow suit? I don’t know, but this is one of the best years this blog has had yet in terms of new and exciting things to cover, so I only hope it continues.

Now: are you watching, Haas?

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We heard they were going to do a new livery. We thought it might involve Sugar Free Red Bull branding somehow. It didn’t. But it’s better.

This is just fantastic. An incredibly vivid, striking shade of metallic blue that will instantly pop out at any track it visits (something that’s especially relevant given what I wrote just a few hours ago about the Haas). Even more vivid red detail that pops out. And the Red Bull logo – not to mention the other sponsor names – picked out in bright silver.

It actually reminds me of one of my favourite ever liveries – the 2001 Prost – with its combination of metallic blue and red, but it’s arguably better, because it’s got a more unified design aesthetic. And just imagine what it’s going to look like under the lights of Singapore. It probably helps that the STR has one of the best design profiles of any of the ten chassis we’ve seen for this season – it’s got a shark fin, but one that actually looks cool and racey, and it doesn’t have a stupid stub nose either – but even on a dog of a car this would look good.

Of course, this means that we now have to say goodbye to the famous Toro Rosso bull, which has adorned every one of their cars (albeit in a much smaller profile over the last few years) since they arrived in 2006. We’ve said many times on the site that it was time for them to move on – and we feel vindicated by the fact that they’ve done so in such spectacular fashion – but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t feel slightly sad at saying goodbye to this piece of livery history. So let’s have a look at it one last time:

Embed from Getty Images

Huh. A shark fin. How about that.

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When Mercedes launched their car, most of the attention was on the shape of the thing rather than the livery – as the reigning (multiple) champions, how they’ve interpreted the new regulations is perhaps under more scrutiny than any other team; and what’s more, they’re just about the only team so far not to have one of those stupid shark fins/sails/flags/whatever you want to call it sticking out the back of the engine cover.

As for the livery, though, there have been tweaks from last year. Yet again they’ve made a slight change to the way the Petronas turqoise is applied to the car – it’s now in electric-looking strands that extend right the way along the side of the nose cone, and on to the front and rear wings. But they still haven’t made it so that the Petronas logo itself is completely backed by turquoise – it still runs partly onto the silver. So it still annoys my slightly pedantic tendencies.

Over at Ferrari, meanwhile, it’s perhaps not surprising that after a pretty unsuccessful season on the track, the team have ditched the white top half of the car and gone back to a red engine cover. However, the presence of that flipping shark fin means that there is an area of the car that gets painted white. It’ll be interesting to see, if the fins do end up being got rid of at some point, if the white moves onto the engine cover or is lost entirely.

Otherwise, we also now have white rear wing endplates (which, unless I’m mistaken, is for the first time ever?) and thin stripes along the side of the monocoque. To be honest, it’s all looking a little busy, and even though it’s basically just “a red car with some white bits”, the sheer number of logos the car has on it means that I think the team could do with having a bit of a rethink of how they work things at some point. It’s also kind of ironic that at a time when most teams don’t have many sponsors, Ferrari – the team who always got by without needing them so much back in the day – now have loads.

And then there’s Williams. Who… yeah.

Basically the same as last year – with the addition of JCB as a new sponsor on the rear wing plates – but like Ferrari (and unlike Force India) they’ve made use of the big old flat panel to extend the Martini branding. Which actually looks nice, notwithstanding the big horrible rectangle it’s printed on to. What I’d really like to see with Williams is the basic colour scheme kept (I really like how the blue sponsor logos look on the white), but just with the Martini stripes taking over more of the back of the car. Except not on a big shark fin.

Oh, and a bit of breaking (well, it was breaking a few hours ago) news – the Haas has been spotted out on track at a filming day:

Hmm. It could just be the light, but it appears they’ve simplified the livery to make it look like last year’s McLaren. Not sure if want. We’ll find out more tomorrow!

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Okay, so it’s not the all-over job of the classic ’60s or testing liveries, instead mixing it with black and white swooping lines and sections. Okay, it looks a little bit like a Spyker or (in certain light) a Manor. Okay, it still doesn’t have a title sponsor. But come on, let’s put all of that aside – the new McLaren is orange.

(Also, the new uniforms look pretty great)

Does it make up for the disappointment of 2015? Almost. Not quite, but almost. At the very least, it shows a team willing to recognise the importance and significance of their livery, and how F1 fans engage with it. It’s what many of us have been clamouring for them to do for years, and you can’t accuse them of ignoring us (nor of passing up the opportunity to milk it as a publicity stunt for all it’s worth).

 

(But we won’t, because we’ve still got the Merc and Ferrari to round up – not to mention a surfeit of launches this Sunday… cor, it’s been some week, hasn’t it?)

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It’s disappointing because in 2015 you did something new and fresh and cool that was our favourite livery of the year. It’s disappointing because if you were going to change it after two years, we expected you to improve on it, not make it worse. It’s disappointing because there’s already a predominantly silver car on the grid.

And it’s disappointing because 2017 was going so well, but then you had to go and spoil it all by doing something stupid like this livery.

It’s just… crap. It’s just a boring mass of silver, with an orange swoosh on the sidepod that doesn’t work. It has no imagination or style. And it has the worst possible interpretation of what to do with the godawful shark fin this year’s cars have been stuck with. What’s odd is that it’s not that different overall from the previous one – it’s just that it shows how making one major change (in this case, switching the engine cover from black to silver) can completely ruin a design.

Guys, you’ve McLarened it. You’ve McLarened it right up.

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Because after yesterday’s fantastic Sauber launch, today we’ve had a team that I honestly expected to run basically the same livery as last year, instead improving on their 2016 effort. Last year’s almost-all-yellow Renault was quite nice, but still something of a waste of having the team in the sport – if Renault are in F1, then basically, you want a car that looks like a bumble bee. Now, the new 2017 challenger may not be as good as their 2010 car, but it’s still a damned fine looking machine.

It’s not perfect, mind. The switch to predominantly black in the back half appears to me to be driven by the need to put new partner Castrol’s logo on the car in full colour; but the additional red and green in that logo, while small, slightly throw things off – it’d be better if they were kept in a uniform white. And from the front, the design looks a little blocky – I’d prefer slightly more in the way of swooping lines and other design elements rather than simply a huge expanse of yellow.

It’s from the top, actually, that the car looks the best, with the yellow lines extending out from the nose along either side of the engine cover, creating a pleasing speed-based effect. And switching the main rear wing plate to be yellow (with black either side) is a great touch. It’s also not totally clear from all of the launch event pictures, but it does appear from that top down view that the black is matt, which in the right light could end up looking absolutely fantastic.

So there we are. Two launches down, two pretty great new designs, and the promise of more surprises to come. Are we heading for the best year of liveries since 2010?

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We expected that they might have to change things this year, due to losing Felipe Nasr’s Banco do Brasil sponsorship – but honestly, the expectation around here was that they would just go back to a boring white, grey or black car. Instead, they’ve come up with a completely new livery to celebrate their 25th year in the sport – and what that’s meant is changing the blue to a proper metallic blue (just like we told them they should!), the yellow to gold, and increasing the volume of white.

What’s interesting about this is that it gives the car a quite retro look, without actually being based on any piece of Sauber’s own previous history. But there’s something about it that calls to mind classic, tobacco-based liveries of the 1980s and 1990s – it’s a little Silk Cut here, a little Embassy Regal there.

It’s also a really good way of covering up the fact that they don’t really have any sponsors aside from Silanna any more – because rather than just leaving the car plain, there are actually design elements on it, from the “25 Years” logo to the stripes that run from the side and on to the rear wing endplates. And kudos, too, for painting that horrible returning shark fin (something that looks worryingly like it’s going to be a recurring feature of 2017’s aerodynamics) black to try and hide it, rather than blue to stand out.

All in all: a bloody good effort from Sauber. Who’d have thunk it? 2017 is already off to a very strong start, and if previous rumours about McLaren and Toro Rosso end up coming true… well, the “who’s got the best livery” order is getting a right old shakeup.

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Okay, this is getting crazy. It’s mind-boggling enough that McLaren might actually be switching to an orange livery this year (and incidentally, the latest issue of F1 Racing goes as close to confirming it as you could hope for)… but now we’re hearing chatter that Toro Rosso, who’ve had basically the same livery for the entirety of this site’s life, might also be making a change.

And not just any change. Us livery fans have been clamouring for a light blue “Sugar Free” variant pretty much ever since the team came into the sport, and people have been mocking them up for years (the one at the head of this post is a classic example, by an artist called Jezson, aka Jez Hancox, but I did a much more ham-fisted one myself in 2012, too) but I’m not sure anyone ever seriously expected that it might happen. Only it turns out, according to F1 blogger Joe Saward, that it might finally be on the table. Joe writes:

There are now suggestions coming out of Italy that Scuderia Toro Rosso is going to switch from the dark blue that it has used to a new lighter colour, which will help to sell Red Bull’s sugar-free product, as opposed to its usual drink.  This has existed since 2003  and has all the same ingredients of Red Bull except sugar, which is replaced by sweeteners. It is still only a small part of the overall Red Bull sales which amounted to $43 billion in 2015. The company has a 30 percent share of the global energy drink market and as such is obviously likely to be a target for sugar-free campaigns and such things as taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, based on the links between sugar and heart disease. This debate seems to be ramping up and so drinks companies are responding by trying to build more sales of sugar-free products.

Take this, of course, with a pinch of aspartame. But this is the closest indication we’ve ever had that one of the longest-serving fan livery ideas could yet become a reality – and if it happened the same year as McLaren’s much-vaunted touch of brightness… well, 2017 could turn out to be an unexpectedly classic livery year.

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