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.

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!

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!

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?

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.

A pleasant surprise when it was unveiled, as the team had largely stuck with the same type of white/green/orange scheme since their inception. The downside was that it looked too much like a McLaren, but viewed in isolation this was a really strong and well-designed effort, with sponsor logos tailored perfectly to fit and the orange and green stripes giving a touch of individuality. It would have been nice if they’d made any changes at all for 2016, but in a year when almost all other liveries were holdovers from the previous year, this was a welcome change.

2016 promises to be a fairly exciting year for new designs, as we’ve not only got one entirely brand new team joining the grid in the shape of Haas, but there are also some changes in ownership and/or main sponsors that threaten to shake things up after 2015 largely continued along similar lines to 2014. There might finally be a major change to Red Bull’s livery now they’ve linked up with the red/white/green TAG Heuer, plus of course with Renault completing their re-buyout of Lotus we should hopefully we the return of their classic yellow and black to the grid. Rumours about other manufacturers such as Audi and Aston Martin joining the fray at some point refuse to go away, and we may even see a change at Manor/Marussia due to the departure of their original founders. And then there’s McLaren: surely they must have a title sponsor lined up this time around?

With all of this speculation, there’s naturally been a lot of fantasy-livery-making going on – and as you’ll know if you’ve spent any time on this site, fantasy-livery-making is something we utterly love. So here’s what some of our favourite designers – and a few new ones – have been up to.

A name that’ll be familiar to any of you who’ve seen these posts of ours before (or followed our Twitter) will be Camille de Bastiani. When he’s not busy actually designing liveries for Campos Racing, Cam has been doing a few fantasy liveries for 2016. Earlier this year he responded to reports that Haas might be running a yellow car with this sweet little number:

… but now that it looks like Renault are coming back in as Renault, perhaps Haas won’t go with yellow and black after all. Because there might be a car on the grid that looks like this, instead:

Updated version of my @RenaultSportF1 livery ! #F1 #2016 #photoshop RT if you want this to be real ! pic.twitter.com/sSW4MGSfhY

— Camille De Bastiani (@camdebastiani) September 7, 2015

Back when Red Bull’s engine situation was still heavily up in the air, Camille also gave us an interpretation of what the car might look like if the team linked up with Alfa Romeo branding:

What about a #RedBull with @alfa_romeo rebadged @ScuderiaFerrari engines ? Might look cool ! @wtf1couk @f1colours pic.twitter.com/atUkDTWKOZ

— Camille De Bastiani (@camdebastiani) September 18, 2015

We haven’t yet seen a fantasy Red Bull-TAG, by the way, but as soon as someone does one we’ll be all over it!

Back to Haas for a moment, here’s an alternative possibility for if they went with Ferrari-inspired red (albeit with a slightly American twist), courtesy of Jerome Ghera:

While we liked the 2015 Force India livery a lot, it’s likely that it’ll see a change this year – due to rumours not only of them potentially becoming Aston Martin (of which more shortly), but also a reported tie-up with Johnnie Walker as a main sponsor. Here’s an interpretation of the latter, by another of our old favourites Tim Holmes:

But what if Force India did become Aston? This concept design from Borja Sanz is labelled as a 2017 car, but features several of FI’s current sponsors so could quite easily be a 2016 design as well. Wishful thinking, maybe?

@AMR_Official 2017 #F1 #Livery #Design #Concept pic.twitter.com/WdrK8wMukQ

— Borja Sanz (@Borja_Sanz) November 6, 2015

A newcomer on the fantasy design scene – at least, we haven’t seen him before – is Andy Werner, but he’s made a big splash with some fantastic 2016 concepts that even go so far as to include race suits and (in some instances) teamwear. His Haas concept is a little more out there than the others, and is maybe a touch busy, but the colour scheme is gorgeous:

Back when rumours of a Red Bull-Audi linkup were at their height, Andy came up with a similarly dramatic interpretation of what that might look like:

He’s also had a crack at bringing Aston Martin to life (although not, it would appear, with any kind of link to Force India – love this colour scheme, though):

And finally, on somewhat safer ground, this is something we’ve wanted to see ever since those rumours first came about – a realistic 2016 Renault with the existing Lotus/Enstone sponsors!

Let’s face it, the real car’s almost certainly going to look disappointing compared to that.

If you’re a fantasy livery designer yourself, or if you see any kicking about that we haven’t yet spotlighted, feel free to let us know here or on Twitter, and we’ll round up some more when the 2016 season gets closer!

   

If the team were so keen to include this purple on behalf of Infiniti – and I’ve no problem with the colour in its own right, I loved the mid-90s Simteks and it would have been great if F1’s tobacco-sponsor heyday had ever included a Silk Cut car – then you wonder why they desperately needed to keep the blue, red and yellow. I know those are Red Bull’s corporate colours, but it’s not as if anyone’s in danger of not associating the team with that brand, now, is it? As it is, this car is just a cluttered, ugly mess – nothing about it works, with the possible exception of the “Red Bull” wording alongside the monocoque. And it yet doesn’t feel like it would take too much – just a smarter distribution of the chosen colours – to make it work.

Elsewhere in livery news, both Sauber and Force India revealed minor tweaks in testing to the liveries that they’d initially launched. Force India have added a small green stripe to the lower half of the car, which better strengthens the application of their original branding but also slightly throws off the smart look of the orange/silver/black combo:

And Sauber have made a couple of changes to fend off the accusation that their new blue-and-yellow job was a little dull to begin with – a new yellow stripe on the nose (which does well to break up the otherwise plain block), and massive race numbers on the side of the monocoque:

 

And finally, there has of course been confirmation by the FIA that they’re banning drivers from changing their helmet designs over the course of a season. We’re slightly conflicted by this: on the one hand, it was kind of annoying to see Vettel rock up with a different design for every single race. But on the other, as a rule it’s just absolutely bloody mental. It does nothing to help the sport to introduce it, and while it’s a shame that the classic days of immediately distinctive driver lids are (mostly) gone, an artificial rule like this isn’t going to change that (the designs themselves will still be as they currently are – often quite detailed and intricate compared with the block-colour jobs of old, and in some cases very heavily influenced by sponsors).

Indeed, the question is raised of just how strongly the FIA will enforce this: if a driver is at (say) Ferrari, but then moves to Red Bull mid-season, would they have to keep the Marlboro badges and not add Red Bull logos? And if not, then will we see drivers claim that in fact their designs are entirely sponsor-based, to give them the freedom to change them?

It should be a driver’s prerogative to wear whatever design he wants on his race helmet, and if Vettel’s decision is to change it every race, then (annoying as that is) he should be allowed. To completely take away the possibility of fun one-off single-race designs, as had become something of a trend in recent years, feels like an incredibly dog-in-the-manger move by the FIA; and it’s a case of inventing a problem then pretending to solve it, rather than dealing with any number of the real and serious problems that currently threaten the credibility and integrity of F1.

  

 

What with Williams sticking with their Martini job, and McLaren-Honda continuing to hint that white and red are on the horizon, 2015 (despite the reduced number of cars) is shaping up to be a livery year that I’m actually excited about. I hope it’ll last.

Once again, the change is predominantly on the sidepod – although apparently, Smirnoff’s name will only appear there for certain races – and it means that the large orange block that previously carried Sahara branding is now entirely black. I’m a little bit torn on this, to be honest – the car looks pretty cool the way it’s now almost all in black (with just a few flashes of orange, white and green) and it calls to mind an early ’90s car even more now than before. But on the other hand, I really liked the orange sidepods, and it’s an under-used colour in F1 generally that previously served to give Force India a nice bit of identity. Also, the new design still doesn’t solve the biggest problem on the car, which is that ghastly and out-of-place Claro logo.

I suspect that if the team had launched with the car like this, I’d like it more – I’m just not sure it was an improvement on what was there previously. But it’s always nice to see new major sponsors coming in (whatever you might think about whether alcohol branding really mixes with motorsport), and indeed it’s hard not to see this as a reaction by Smirnoff (although their drinks are different) to the prominence Martini have been afforded by their Williams linkup.