Yet as soon as they sell the team back to Manor, what happens? Well, first the car gets some additional blue partway through last season, courtesy of a sponsorship deal; and then, for 2016, their first full season as “Manor Racing” rather than “Manor Marussia”, they finally go… full-on blue and red (and black and white).

And okay, this livery isn’t perfect. It’s almost entirely lacking in sponsors (although they have at least got a couple), and once again we’d have to quibble about the fact that after black and grey, the most common colours on the grid in 2016 are red, white and blue. But, nobody else has got them in this combination, and the blue is a particularly lovely metallic shade that calls to mind my beloved Prost Acer. It certainly looks a lot more striking out on track than last year’s car did, or indeed than the plastic-blue Sauber (which, incidentally, looks to have retained an almost identical livery this year, just with a few additional sponsors on the wing). And while the text on the car is sparse, I really like the team’s new, clean and simple typography.

 

Well, that or the fact that they are basically now the London Weekend Television logo.

Of course, they can’t really be blamed for this: hiring a livery designer was probably pretty low down the list of budget priorities (although I bet many an F1 Colours reader would have done it for free!) and it’s not even as if they have any sponsors to try and incorporate. I mean, literally: they have no sponsors.

Yet they have at least made one change to the design, which is to remove the large black area from the side view; and that suggests that maybe they do have some kind of plan for the livery. As does the fact that they have brand new team wear, in a different shade of red, with a bit more emphasis on the black:

So perhaps, when they’ve had the chance to settle in, we’ll see something a bit different? And some actual logos on the car? Let’s hope so.