Over the eight previous years we’ve done these roundups, we’ve been annoyingly inconsistent when it comes to the scoring system applied to the rankings – but for the sake of allowing some kind of comparison with recent years, let’s once again go with a nice and simple “marks out of ten”.

Remember, as if it needed stating, that these are the personal opinions of F1 Colours, and your mileage may vary significantly (just as McLaren’s did in testing from everyone else yet again, lol). Also, these are not a judgement on the aesthetics of the cars themselves – a badly-shaped car can still have a fantastic livery, although in some cases the liveries are judged by how well they’re applied to whatever the shape of the car is.

(What we really mean by this in 2018 is that all the cars are kind of ruined by having the halos, but we got through stub noses in 2014, we can get through this as well. But as a general rule, if halos are going to have to stick around, then for the love of god actually paint them in a colour relevant to the car. We didn’t dock any points for carbon-coloured ones this time, but if we see them next year, we might start doing.)

Anyway, without any further ado, let’s get on with the rankings! To increase the tension, they’re once again being presented in ascending order of goodness. But straight away, there’s a change at the bottom of the pile…

Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport

They may be champions on the track, but they’re not champions of coming up with interesting liveries. Okay, so they do actually change how the turquoise Petronas pattern is used each time, and they get points for having differently-coloured race numbers for each driver. But they’ve been back in the sport for nine years now, and every car has been a variation of the same basic colour scheme. I know they’re Mercedes Petronas, and those two names carry a mandate for two very specific colours, but surely they could do something a bit different by now?

5/10 (last year: 6)

Scuderia Ferrari

The new all-red Ferrari has certainly got its fans, and I’d agree it’s better than the last one, but there’s still something about it that just doesn’t work for me. It’s not that I necessarily think it needs black wings (although I do), but whether it’s the shade of red, or the inconsistent sponsor application (loads clustered in some places, nothing at all in others), it just doesn’t connect for me. It does, however, have comfortably the best halo.

6/10 (last year: 5)

Williams Martini Racing

If this weren’t going to be the last ever year of Williams Martini, I’d probably dock them further points for this. But as it is, I will be sorry to see the colour scheme leave the sport, so I’m being slightly kinder to it than I otherwise might have been. When it does go, it’ll be hard not to see it as a wasted opportunity – could they not have done a bit more with it year-on-year? This year is actually the most different it’s looked since it was introduced, although that’s mainly down to the bizarre decision to leave the bottom half of the car completely unpainted. But they do still have comfortably the best teamwear gear, so that’s something.

6/10 (last year: 6)

Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team

Oh Sauber, you’ve gone back to being all Sauber-ish again. Just because you came up with a rush-job livery to announce the Alfa Romeo partnership doesn’t mean you have to stick with it when the season comes around, you know. The metallic deep red is absolutely gorgeous, and if it were on the majority of the car this would be, like 2017’s blue/gold/white effort, one of the best things on this year’s grid. But as it is, too much of the car is just in a plain dull white with barely anything on it. Such a shame.

6/10 (last year: 8)

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing

If they hadn’t shown us the camo livery, I’d have been happier about them just sticking with the same matt job as the last two years. What would be even better, of course, would have been the introduction of a proper Aston Martin colour scheme – but I doubt that was ever really likely to happen. As it is, this is still a very good-looking car, but it’s not good-looking enough to justify being pleased with being basically identical (give or take some logos) this time around.

6/10 (last year: 7)

Sahara Force India F1 Team

It feels odd giving this the same score as last year’s car, given that I do actually prefer it by some way. But last year’s car was a middling design that got added points for the surprise factor and introduction of a (n almost totally) new colour to the grid. This is a better design that doesn’t have that “wow” to it. The shade of pink is a vast improvement, and while others have declared the use of white among it to make for a cluttered mess, as I mentioned at the time, it’s got a quite retro 1990s feel that works for me. There’s still a nagging feeling they could be doing something better or more dramatic with this sponsorship linkup, but this is still a massively distinctive livery that makes you forget they used to be black-and-silver for a couple of years before it. Good halo painting, too.

7/10 (last year: 7)

Haas F1 Team

Vast improvement. I didn’t like last year’s launch Haas, and I liked the replacement one even less. This time around, you can actually read the logos on it, the colours are better-chosen, and the layout more appealing. White, red and black aren’t the most exciting of colour choices but they work well together, especially on a team that has always felt slightly more like it ought to be in IndyCar. Haas have still to have a truly great livery, but at least for the first time they’ve managed “decent”.

7/10 (last year: 4)

McLaren F1 Team

I so wanted this to be a 10. I loved last year’s livery at launch, but I acknowledge in retrospect that it wasn’t quite the McLaren livery we were all looking for, especially after seeing the Indy version. So changing to an all-over papaya look, with added blue bits, should have absolutely nailed it. But it just… doesn’t. The problem is the sponsors – or, rather, the lack thereof. In the side view, it just looks terrible – so flat, so lacking in any kind of life or dimension. It’s improved between launch and the race weekend, as they’ve now got the Chandon and Dell logos on the side, but they’re just too small, especially from a distance. Which is a shame, because from the front or top, it is absolutely perfect, basically everything I could have wanted an orange McLaren to be. The blue tints work better than just going grey (and conversely the dark grey sponsors work better than if they were all in blue) and I even like the detail of the lighter blue outlining the race numbers. But man, that side-on view. It just brings it down so much. Gutting.

8/10 (last year: 9)

Renault Sport Formula One Team

Renault keep getting progressively better with their liveries each year – if only they’d introduce some more white (not just on the sponsor logos), and we could really get closer to the platonic ideal of a 1980s Renault livery. But this will certainly do for now. Like the Sauber and, to an extent, the McLaren, it has an odd effect of looking almost completely different from the side to how it does from the front – but in this case it actually looks quite deliberate, and works really well. It’s hard to deny that these colours work absolutely perfectly together, especially with that revised and slightly brighter shade of yellow. They need to fill in the race numbers, mind, but otherwise: spot on.

9/10 (last year: 8)

Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda

This was a 10/10 livery last year, and while the only real change is the addition of Honda logos this time, there’s nothing that means it’s not a 10/10 livery this year either. In fact, the Honda logos arguably make it even better. Will it still be a 10/10 livery if they keep rolling it out year after year? Well, the rule of Diminishing Williams Martinis suggests not, but equally, I can’t imagine a time when I ever won’t love this.

10/10 (last year: 10)

So that’s 2018. In one sense it’s a pretty good year, in that there’s no livery that I actively dislike – but there’s also an awful lot of middling ones, and only really three genuine standouts, the best of which is also identical to last year. What’s pleasing, though, is that only Sauber have really gone backwards – and even then, they’ve introduced a nice new colour tone to the grid (it’s just that they haven’t covered enough of the car with it).

This maintains, then, the current trend of a reasonably bright and colourful grid, and one upon which we can actually tell most of the cars apart when they line up. Sponsorship deals also continue to rise, although I’m not sure we’ll ever again see a time when full-on title sponsorship deals are commonplace, and Williams’ imminent loss of Martini is a worrying step backwards.

So that’s my take. Which are your favourites?

The post 2018 Liveries: The Verdict! appeared first on F1 Colours.

Embed from Getty Images

The main change is the shade of pink, which has moved on from that somewhat washed-out Pepto Bismol look to something a lot brighter and more striking. But aside from that, the overall look of the design has changed, too – going from swooping rounded lines to a more stripes-and-blocks-based pattern.

And while it does perhaps look a bit busy in places, I do kind of like it – I think because there’s a distinct 1990s-ness of a sort we’ve generally been lacking of late. If the pink were one of a couple of different shades of blue we could almost be looking at a late ’90s Benetton or Williams.

Team Look We All Know It’s Going To Be “Force One” Don’t We have also decided to paint the halo in the colour of the car – which, the more of the cars we’ve seen, we’re veering towards being preferential to the carbon-black option (despite what Mercedes say).

Another team who’ve painted their halo the same colour as the car are Red Bull, who confirmed that their camo-livery is no more (indeed, it wasn’t even used for testing, making the point of using it in the first place somewhat difficult to fathom), and that they’ll instead race in basically the same as last year but with increased Aston Martin prominence:

Well done, guys.

The post [Insert Team Name Here] Go Brighter Pink appeared first on F1 Colours.

But still, it wasn’t quite a McLaren. And then Indy happened, and showed everyone exactly what a proper, papaya-orange-and-blue McLaren could look like. From that moment on… this was inevitable, really.

And it is gorgeous. I actually think this shade of orange isn’t as good for a racing car (in general) as last year’s, but it’s unquestionably right for a McLaren. Introducing the blue is an interesting touch that I didn’t think they’d do – it was traditionally used by them in American racing series rather than F1, so despite it being on various fan interpretations prior to this I’m surprised to see it as the secondary colour rather than dark grey or even silver. But I’m glad they did, because it helps to make the car even more striking and distinctive (as well as creating a visual link to all the goodwill that Alonso’s adventures elsewhere have generated).

But for all of that, it does have a problem: and the problem is sponsors. There are some who will no doubt like the idea of an almost entirely plain car without any logos messing it up. To those people I say: it’s not 1958. A plain car looks like the car of a team with no money and support – and in the side-on view, the McLaren really does look weak. It needs something, and if it doesn’t have sponsors, then (like the sidepod on last year’s car) there really ought to be some kind of design element instead.

There are no such problems in the front-on view, though – which has several sponsors on the nose, lovely new race numbers, and Chandon emblazoned on the blue rear wing. From the front, this looks like a proper racing car, a great racing car, a car to bring the good times back to McLaren. Fans of the team will be hoping that it’s this car, and not the back-of-the-grid impression given by the side-on view, that’s most indicative of their upcoming performance.

So, all in all, I’m not sure if I think this is a better livery than last year. But is it a better McLaren livery? Categorically yes. They probably should have painted the halo blue as well, though.

The post Glorious Orange: Part II appeared first on F1 Colours.

First up, it’s Ferrari, and a bit of a change in that with the departure of Santander, there’s now almost no white on the livery:

I’m not sure quite how sold I am on red wings on a Ferrari – it looked good in 2007, but that was with the bold and striking Marlboro branding still in place. Here, the big empty red areas – especially on the rear wing and engine cover – just make it look like something’s missing. If you’re going to have big empty panels on your car, it surely makes sense to mask it by having different colours placed there – and in Ferrari’s case, it’ll always feel slightly lacking to me if it doesn’t also have predominant black and yellow.

Love the little Scuderia badge at the top of the halo, though.

Over at reigning champions Mercedes, meanwhile, it’s (unsurprisingly) pretty much business as usual, albeit with some tweaks here and there:

The Petronas branding has had its annual tweak, this time making the fibre-optic style swooshy patterns even more marked. But in the process, the volume of turquoise on the sidepod has decreased further, and I think I always prefer these cars when they’ve got more of it. The amount of black has been toned down as well, and while once again we see race numbers at the rear of the engine cover (it’s definitely an agreed trend, isn’t it?) I really don’t think the newly white-out 77 stands out the way the blue one did last year. Here’s hoping Lewis’ #44 is still going to be in red.

And finally, while they haven’t had an official launch yet, Toro Rosso have responded to a leaked photo from their filming day by releasing an official one:

Why settle for a leaked photo, when you can have an original ? #STR13 pic.twitter.com/yrD8L1REP9

— Toro Rosso (@ToroRosso) February 21, 2018

… and it confirms that the 2018 car will basically look exactly the same as the 2017 one (albeit now with Honda logos). Which, given that last year’s was one of the best liveries ever, is fine and dandy by us.

The post Catching Up: Mercedes, Ferrari, Toro Rosso appeared first on F1 Colours.

Last year saw more of a compromise between the two competing sides of their identity: the front half was yellow, the back half was black. It didn’t completely sate those of us who’d love to see them go full-on bumblebee stripey, but it did a good job. For 2018, however, things have changed again – and in the ongoing battle, it’s now the black side of things that’s very much coming out on top.

By which I mean to say: the 2018 Renault is quite similar to the 2017 one, only there’s more black on it this time.

The big difference is that whereas last year the entire monocoque was yellow, and everything else behind it (a few splashes aside) was black, this time around it’s only the nose that’s yellow – the sides of the monocoque are now black. This creates a particularly unusual effect, in that if you look at the car side-on, it’s black; but from the front, it’s yellow.

I could perhaps be accused of inconsistency in how I react to Renault having a car in this colour compared with other teams. Because it does look really good in the side-on view: uniform white sponsor logos (except, again, for that pesky Castrol) and splashes of yellow. And I’m a fan of many past black cars – among them Saubers, Minardis and Arrowses. But the problem is… it’s Renault. Renault don’t have to be black, they have yellow in their locker – and if you can paint your car yellow, then it’s this humble correspondent’s view that you should.

I’m also trying to figure out the shade of yellow on it – the 2016 car had this problem, in that it sometimes looked orangey and sometimes a more fluorescent shade. This one, though, does look like it’s a brighter and more striking yellow than last year’s slightly golder tint – more 2000 Jordan than 1999 Jordan, you could say. That should help it to stand out – from the front, at least.

But still, it absolutely cannot be denied that it’s a great-looking racing car – and as with the past couple of Renaults, we should probably stop thinking about what it could or should be, and instead enjoy what it is.

(Although I’m not entirely certain that those race numbers will pass “easily legible from a distance” muster. I would not be at all surprised to see them get filled in, like McLaren’s were last year, before we’re a race or two into the season.)

Meanwhile, for the second post in a row a piece of team launch news also comes with a piece of news about our designer friend Sean Bull, who announced this afternoon that he has been hired by Renault to work in their graphic design department! So that thing we said about how F1 teams should start looking to hire designers like Sean turned out to be… remarkably prescient. Huge congratulations to Sean, and we can’t wait to see what contributions he’ll make to the team’s design identity; although he did make us feel rather old when he said this:

cheers mate! like ive said before, your website as a kid really got me started on this! seeing all the obscure ones you found and sketching them out with felt tips was what i did!

— Sean Bull Design (@seanbulldesign) February 21, 2018

“As a kid”. Blooming heck.

The post Renault: The Fight Between Black And Yellow Continues appeared first on F1 Colours.

At this point I’ll direct you to what I said about this in our What to Expect in 2018 piece:

While the colours used are not without their charm – putting us in mind of the unused Force India test car – the application itself is (in true Sauber fashion) a bit bland and flat, especially after the delight that was their 2017 car. So here’s hoping when the car actually comes to rolling out, it’s had a bit more work done to the paint job. Of course, this is Sauber, so chances are this is exactly what we’ll see.

And sure enough, there we have it. There are differences between this version and the December version, but they really just amount to a couple of additional new sponsors here and there. It’s also worth noting that this one doesn’t have the race number on it, but the launch version was actually the first car to show the new “rear of the engine cover” placement that really does seem to have become standard this year (as demonstrated by Renault, more of whom later), so we’d be amazed if the actual race version of the Sauber doesn’t have it too.

But yes. I’m torn on this one, because I really like about half of it – specifically, the metallic red half. But the white and blue area is just back to Boring Old Sauber, and takes up far too much of the car – and given what a fantastic livery they had last year, it’s a shame that they’ve regressed a bit here. It also means that with Williams and Hass already having unveiled predominantly white cars, already 30% of the grid will be that main colour – which is all starting to feel a bit 2008-ish.

One utterly terrific thing about Sauber this year, however, is the new helmet design for Marcus Ericsson:

Here it is! My first ever F1 Helmet for @Ericsson_Marcus ! clean, retro and minimal, with a great nod to Ronnie Peterson!

what do you think?

great job by @mikovicdesigns on the painting!#sauberc37 #ME9 #ericsson #f1 #f12018 #sauberalfaromeo pic.twitter.com/YkhDLUfimx

— Sean Bull Design (@seanbulldesign) February 20, 2018

… which comes from one Sean Bull, a designer well-known to us for his fantastic fan-livery creations. Like many of his fellow fan designers, Sean has in recent years begun actually creating liveries for professional teams and drivers, and we’re hugely pleased to see him make the step up into F1. Given how good his work here is – demonstrating how solid colour-block helmets really are better than modern ones – we can’t wait to see more of this sort of thing in the future. Maybe Sauber could start by getting Sean to spice up the car a bit?

The post Sauber Unveil Previously-Unveiled Livery appeared first on F1 Colours.

It’s not that I don’t like the matt livery Red Bull have had since 2016 – it’s just that new liveries are always exciting, and the beefed-up Aston Martin sponsorship (you know, the one where a car company is the title sponsor of a racing team named after a drinks company) came with the potential for a fresh colour scheme to be added to the grid. And then, upon unveiling their new RB14, the team did so with a stylish new black-and-blue-and-white paint job. Hooray!

Unfortunately, it’s just another one of their camouflage testing liveries.

Which makes trying to judge it kind of pointless, really. The colour scheme is great, the white lettering and numbers work superbly well, and the pattern is… well, it’s distinctive, but of course it’s designed to be deliberately obfuscating (Red Bull do these things so that other teams don’t look at their aerodynamics during testing and nick them, as if the teams can’t see them at, say, the first race weekend of the season). But like I say, this is all a bit pointless, because the car is going to run for a few weeks in testing, and then it’s going to be painted back to look like last season’s again.

Someone pointed out to me when I said this was pointless that at least it means we’re talking about it. And, hey, I’ve done a post on it, so I guess I’ve proven them right. But I’m still annoyed.

Oh, actually, there is one thing that’s interesting to talk about: the livery, temporary as it is, seemingly confirms that it’s going to be a standard thing in 2018 to put race numbers at the base of the engine cover fin. It’s surely too much of a coincidence that Haas, Red Bull and (in a car I haven’t talked about yet because – well, look at it, aside from not painting the bottom half of the sidepod and monocoque, and a couple of new minor sponsors, it’s basically the same as last year) Williams have done it:

So that’s something, eh? Watch Renault and Sauber completely blow that theory for me tomorrow, now…

The post Red Bull’s New Livery Is Not Their New Livery appeared first on F1 Colours.

And, thankfully, it has a new livery:

It’s no secret that I wasn’t a fan of their first 2017 car, and even less so of their second one. So I’m pleased to see them ditch the incredibly dull grey, and bring back the bright red that was lacking from that bafflingly revamped livery.

The car is now predominantly white (or it could be a very very light grey), and while it’s still a fairly basic colour scheme it does look smart (they always have) with the added bonus that it no longer looks like it’ll just blend in to the asphalt of the track. In effect they’ve gone back to an evolution of their original 2016 car, albeit with subtle tweaks here and there and – on the whole – improvement.

It’s difficult to make out, but the car does still have a “shark fin”, albeit a greatly reduced one compared to last year. As with the controversial new halo device, Haas have chosen to mask it almost entirely, by painting it black – although the race number at the very back of the engine cover is a nice touch. It remains to be seen whether other teams will go down a similar route with the halo, or if we might see some of them do anything a bit more dramatic.

It’s also worth noting that there aren’t any driver identification panels (i.e. “GRO” and “MAG”) – these may have been left off for the launch, or it could be that teams have dialled back on that after, in some instances, slightly overcompensating for the FIA’s new regulations. It’d be a shame to lose that, though, as we quite liked it.

Anyway, on the whole, this still isn’t particularly exciting – but it does have a little more zest to it than the team have had in the last couple of years, so it’s a cautious if still largely indifferent thumbs up here.

The post Haas First Out Of The Gate For 2018 appeared first on F1 Colours.

F1 launch patterns have shifted quite a bit in the past few years – when we first launched this site in 2007, it wasn’t unusual to get several launches in January, but nowadays it’s not considered likely to see anyone’s new car or livery until close to the first days of testing in February.

But to get everyone in the mood, and based on admittedly somewhat limited information, we thought we’d take a run through what we reckon we can expect from the various teams this year.

For 2018, there are a few major sponsor changes already announced – and possibly more still to come – and of course teams will also have to take into consideration such factors as the new Halo head protection and (with a full season to plan for it) the number and name display regulations.

With the caveat that it’s always possible for someone to spring a surprise (as multiple teams delightfully did last year, then, here are some team-by-team thoughts.

Sauber

Sauber stole a march on everyone by suddenly announcing at the beginning of December not only their tie-up with Alfa Romeo, not only their 2018 driver line-up, but also a revised livery. While the colours used are not without their charm – putting us in mind of the unused Force India test car – the application itself is (in true Sauber fashion) a bit bland and flat, especially after the delight that was their 2017 car. So here’s hoping when the car actually comes to rolling out, it’s had a bit more work done to the paint job. Of course, this is Sauber, so chances are this is exactly what we’ll see.

Mercedes

There’s no reason to expect a change in approach from Mercedes this year – the car will likely be silver, black and turquoise yet again. They do mix it up slightly each year, but we’d be amazed if there were any major alterations this time around. Hopefully they keep the different-coloured race numbers for Hamilton and Bottas, as that was a nice touch.

Ferrari

Ferrari have lost the sponsorship of Santander, which may mean a significant reduction in the amount of white on the car – although they are still technically supported by Marlboro so don’t expect to see it disappear entirely, nor for the shade of red to go back to a darker one. But if we got back black wings? We’d be happy with that.

Incidentally, Ferrari are the only team so far to announce a launch date for their 2018 car: they’ll do so on 22nd February.

Red Bull

Excitingly, Red Bull have got a new title sponsor in the shape of Aston Martin – although it’s somewhat confusing that the team that’s named after a drinks company now has a car company as a non-technical sponsor. The big question is whether RBR will simply work the Aston logo into their existing blue colour scheme, or if they’ll do something dramatic and pick from one of Aston’s classic sets of racing colours. Despite the fact that we like the matt blue job they’ve had for the past couple of years, we’d very much like to see them do the latter, especially if it involves green.

Toro Rosso

Worryingly, Toro Rosso have officially added “Red Bull” as a sponsor name on the entry list this year – which may mean that the company will be compensating for the presence of Aston Martin over at the other team by increasing their branding on the junior squad. Given that the 2017 Toro Rosso was one of the most beautiful cars of the modern era, it would be a real shame if they went back to traditional Red Bull blue, red and yellow. Fingers crossed it’s just about the name and we basically get the same car again this year.

Force India

The pink BWT car was fantastic in theory but slightly disappointing in execution – maybe due to the rushed way in which it came out. Hopefully this time around we’ll see something that’s had a bit more time spent on it, and a bolder shade of pink. There could possibly be more blue involved this year, too. Either way, the main hope is that they sort out doing the race numbers properly this time…

McLaren

McLaren delighted us by going orange last year – but it wasn’t enough for some fans, who wanted a more traditional shade and scheme, a feeling that was only enhanced by the classic look of Fernando Alonso’s Indy 500 entry. The good news is that the team have hinted that they could shift to the “papaya” orange for 2018, with Zak Brown – a man who really does seem actually interested in liveries and what people think of them – saying “I think the fans want us to go to papaya orange. When we did the IndyCar we had an overwhelming amount of ‘please make your F1 car like that’, so we are waiting on a few sponsor decisions which can also dictate what a car looks like.”

But is it too much to hope that Alonso switches to using that wonderful retro helmet design, too…?

Williams

Until we hear otherwise, it looks like Williams are sticking with their Martini deal for at least another year – so Williams being Williams, expect the car to look extremely similar again.

Renault

Having landed on a pretty strong and “Renault-ish” livery for 2017, it would be surprising if the team moved heavily away from it this year – they probably have other things on their mind, to be honest. We’d love to see white introduced as a third main colour to take them properly back to their 1980s roots, but otherwise we have no real complaints with how the car looks these days.

Haas

Anyone’s guess, really, given that the team decided to change their 2017 livery partway through the season to something bland and grey and white. Maybe we’ll get something more exciting this year – they pretty much have a blank canvas to do what they want, given the lack of sponsor pressures – but I’d be wary of making any serious predictions.

Those are our thoughts – what do you reckon? Anything you particularly want to see on the grid this year, or any developments we’ve missed? Let us know!

The post What to Expect in 2018 appeared first on F1 Colours.

In the past we’ve done roundups of fan-created livery designs looking to the next year, but this time around, rather than gathering the work of several different artists on the same teams, we’re looking at just one artist who’s gone particularly above and beyond in terms of visualising the 2018 season.

Daniel Crossman is one of our favourite up-and-coming designers (we hesitate to say “fan designer” or “amateur designer” about the likes of Daniel and Sean Bull, because that overlooks the fact that they do actually do professional design work within motorsport) and he’s one of several who are turning out designs that are more immediately fan-pleasing than the ones that we often see on actual cars.

(Incidentally, we know that fantasy designers are, of course, not subject to the same design considerations as the designers of actual working team liveries – so when we say a design looks “better” than the one on an actual car, we say it with the knowledge that there might be reasons why this the case beyond simple aesthetic decisions. We also say it, in this particular instance, in the knowledge that 2017 was a vintage year for excellent F1 liveries almost entirely across the board.)

Anyway, Daniel has not just done a few different concepts for the 2018 season – he’s worked out multiple possible designs for every team on the grid. Some of these are based on rumours about new sponsorship linkups are rebrand, and others are from the realm of pure fantasy – but what they all are is excellent. So we’ve decided to go through each team that he’s done a portfolio for, and pick out our favourite – to make a complete Fantasy 2018 Grid designed entirely by him. And we’ve even included one of his designs for a non-existent “returning” team, just to add an eleventh car to the grid.

Note that some of these designs don’t take into account driver and engine changes that have happened since they were done!

MERCEDES

Keeping it simple, what’s good about this Mercedes design is that it strips back the amount of black that has crept onto the car in recent years. It’s understandable that the Petronas turquoise needs to be on there, but the original “Silver Arrows” identity has been somewhat lost of late, and restricting the black area to the shark fin is a good way of dealing with it.

FERRARI

Like us, Daniel clearly hankers after the days when the secondary colour on a (darker red) Ferrari was black, rather than white. The team may not have been massively successful in the early ’90s, but the cars were at their best-looking ever, and we’d love to see a Scuderia livery that homages that.

RED BULL

Well, this is a biggie. It’s not considered all that likely that Red Bull will actually completely change their colour scheme to match the new Aston Martin title sponsorship – but as this design shows, it would be absolutely flipping amazing if they did. I’m not generally a fan of fluorescent colours on F1 cars, but I do like this Brawn-style yellow, and it goes so well with the black and classic racing green.

FORCE INDIA

The bold and striking pink BWT livery got Force India a lot of headlines in 2017, and I hope they stick with the concept going forward. But equally, it was a bit of a rush job, and it would be nice to see it evolved into something a bit more deeply thought-out this time – and to go for a richer shade of pink than the slightly washed-out look of the 2017 car. Daniel’s other Force India concepts made use of black as a secondary colour, but I really like the bold step of mixing blue in with this one.

WILLIAMS

Gasp! It’s not Martini! That’s because, as we’ll see later, I’ve constructed this grid on the premise of Williams losing their prestige sponsor at the end of this year. Largely because, while it’s still a lovely livery, it would just be nice to see something done a bit different – both with Martini, and with Williams. A red Williams (calling back to 1998) would be fantastic, but I doubt that’ll happen – so let’s instead have them look to their glory years with a terrific blue and yellow ’80s/early ’90s inspired design.

TORO ROSSO

Let’s face it, there’s not very much that needs to be improved upon with this livery. Daniel has another concept that sees white introduced as a major colour, but I prefer sticking with the Prost-style metallic blue and red, and just shuffling the pattern of the colours around a bit. It looks fundamentally the same, but I really like the idea of splitting the colours behind the bull on the engine cover.

RENAULT

Renault have got the colours right these days, but could possibly stand to apply them in a more interesting way. Taking inspiration from the fantastic striped 2010 car – with more than a bit of Buzzin’ Hornets Jordan in the mix too – this one does the job just fine.

HAAS

It’s not that a grey and white car is inherently a bad idea, it’s just that the 2017 Haas was so dull with it. This is an improvement not just by shifting more towards silver – brightening the whole thing up generally – but also giving a bit more of an American identity with the subtle stars and stripes.

McLAREN

I love that McLaren actually went orange for 2017 so much that I don’t even mind that they didn’t go the whole hog with it. But it’s hard to deny that the fully orange IndyCar that Alonso raced was far more striking than the F1 team’s livery. Daniel hasn’t designed a fully orange McLaren – maybe because it’s not that much of an artistic exercise! – so of his concepts, I’ve picked the one that’s closest to that. Really, though, I’d be happy with one that left out the black almost entirely, and had the logos and race numbers in blue, to give a truly 1960s Bruce McLaren feel (such as with this one of Sean Bull’s).

SAUBER

We’d be more than happy for Sauber to keep their fantastic 2017 livery, but on the other hand… well, just look at what Daniel’s done here. It’s a bit of a leap based on the possibility of Alfa Romeo becoming involved with the team – he also did some white, Alitalia-sponsored designs that are well worth a look – and thus tempting over Martini to recreate a truly classic late 1970s look. Well, wouldn’t you want to see this on the grid?

STEWART

Because, well, why not? And because with the Martini Williams gone, we don’t have a white car within this set. Stewart’s first couple of liveries were a bit muggy, with a cream shade of white and slightly boring application of the tartan, but they switched to a much sharper and brighter look for 1999. I was never really disappointed that we didn’t see it after that season because it was immediately replaced by the green Jaguar – but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice to see it make a comeback. Question is, would they factory-share with Red Bull, or what…?

Check out more of Daniel’s work on Behance, and keep an eye on our Twitter for more of our favourite fantasy designs!

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