Marussia – F1 Colours

Fantasy 2015 Liveries Are A Big Thing Right Now And We Love Them

Seb Patrick — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:13:46 +0000

Perhaps it’s the fact that 2014 didn’t see too many in the way of drastic changes to the previous year’s liveries – or perhaps it’s just that we expect that 2015 may see a radically different style grid for more reasons than one – but whatever the rationale, it seems that there’s a growing trend among fantasy F1 livery designers to already be looking forwards to next year, and styling possible future cars.

In some cases, there’s a desire to genuinely predict how things like the McLaren Honda might look – but in others, it’s simply a case of mixing up the established designs to come up with something fresh. Either way, two designers in particular have given us a deluge of absolutely gorgeous possible or alternate designs in recent weeks, so naturally we thought we’d take a look at them all.

First up we have Tim Holmes, who’s been posting his designs on his Facebook page, and has recently been spotlighted by the top blog WTF1. Tim has, like many people, been speculating on the 2015 McLaren, and his three designs are significantly different from one-another. They all include silver, but one (comfortably my favourite) is an obvious Marlboro homage, another makes use of classic McLaren orange, and the third is a somewhat more out-there heavily blue effort:

Among his other designs, we have some of the cars being just slightly tweaked, such as the Mercedes, Williams and Ferrari:

His Red Bull, meanwhile, makes use of a “can”-styled concept that many of us have wanted to see on the car for years:

The Marussia and Sauber are both welcome reinventions – in particular, I’ve long wanted to see Marussia move away from the red/white/black of their current scheme:

More dramatic are the Caterham and Lotus. I’m not entirely sure that all the colours work well together on the Caterham, but I absolutely love the Lotus – it’s possibly my favourite of his. It’s about time, in my opinion, the team moved away from the JPS-inspired design – and this livery manages to homage both another classic Lotus livery (the yellow Camel) and the team’s prior history as Renault. Brilliant:

Finally, Tim has also knocked up a concept Brabham team, inspired by the recent crowdfunding project to get a Brabham team of some kind back into open-wheeled racing:

Not to be outdone, designer Camille de Bastani – whose work we’ve enjoyed immensely and featured on the site before – has also knocked up a few potential 2015 efforts. Camille has been trying out various different McLaren concepts for a while, some of them along similar lines to Tim’s:

Camille also offers some stylish twists on the existing Ferrari, Mercedes, Sauber and Williams – and, again, goes with a red/white/blue for the Marussia. Seriously, guys, are you paying attention? THIS IS WHAT WE WANT!

But the absolute best in this batch of Camille designs, I think, is his Red Bull:

It’s the first time I’ve seen an alternative Red Bull design that I love that isn’t based on the colours of the can. Somehow, it manages to be based on the existing styling of the car, but just… absolutely loads better (with absolutely no spray paint in sight). Superb work.

Check out more of Tim and Camille’s terrific work at their websites. And if you’ve seen any other fantasy 2015 liveries (or indeed made any yourself) that you think we should feature, get in touch!

Caterham, Marussia and Williams (sort of) round off 2013 launches

Seb Patrick — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:34:03 +0000

And almost as quickly as it began, the 2013 launch season is over. That’s what happens, I guess, when the number of teams is reduced, AND when half of them choose to “launch” by rolling out their new cars amid little fanfare on the same test day.

With the demise of HRT, we’re now left with just two of the new teams who joined the grid at the start of the 2010 season – and they both have different names. But both Caterham (as Lotus) and Marussia (as Virgin) had stonkingly excellent liveries upon their original launches, so how are they shaping up as they go into their respective fourth seasons?

Let’s look at Caterham first, then. In both 2011 and 2012, they disappointed me by moving away from the amazing 2010 car to a slightly weaker variant. I was never especially keen on the diagonal profile strip they introduced in 2011, nor the way they deployed the nose stripe after that first year. Interestingly, however, they seem this year to have moved partly away from the green-and-yellow styling, without ditching it entirely.

The yellow stripe visible in profile is still a bit of a misstep, primarily because it’s now the only such area on the car. Instead, a dark grey has been introduced to the front and rear wings – which actually looks kind of great. Suddenly the car’s quite reminiscent of an ’80s or early ’90s livery – a feeling that’s only enhanced by looking at it from the front on, where there’s no yellow visible at all, and in fact it winds up looking somewhat like the marvellous 1983 Benetton Tyrrell.

But it’s odd that after seemingly making a conscious effort to move away from the “Lotus” design – the shade of green appears to have changed a bit, too – they’d keep that last remnant of it. Ditching yellow from the livery altogether would, I think, have been a more positive statement. Although, that said: that Tyrrell I like so much had a tiny amount of yellow on it, too.

On to Marussia, meanwhile, and there’s further evidence of what was once a striking and superb red-and-black livery being reduced to… well, just something wholly bland, really.

Losing sponsors – including former team namers Virgin – has undoubtedly harmed the team, and they now feel like an outfit severely lacking in identity. The 2013 paint job certainly isn’t horrible – but neither is it in any way dramatic or inspiring. Maybe it’s that the colours are a bit washed out, but more than anything, it reminds me of the 2006 Midland. And that’s not a good thing.

And finally, although they haven’t yet held a proper launch, Williams have shown us their 2013 livery by sticking it on their 2012 car at the first round of testing:

And, well… it’s just a bit depressing, really, as a fan of the team, to see so few sponsors on the car and on their completely uninspiring new uniforms. Obviously the departure of Bruno Senna hasn’t helped much in that regard, and it’s not like the cars of the previous couple of years were plastered in names, but this feels even more stark. It sure feels like a long time ago that this was happening, eh?

Apologies for the lateness in catching up with these launches, by the way – real life got somewhat in the way over the last week. But I’ll be back to do a full roundup – and, most importantly, ranking the things – later in the week…

Marussia? I hardly know her!

Seb Patrick — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:44:59 +0000

Hooray! It’s a new livery that doesn’t just look exactly the same as the old livery! Huzzah!

Okay, so Marussia haven’t made the dramatic change that we might have expected from their taking over the Virgin team – they haven’t taken the opportunity to put their own blue/white/red colour scheme on the car, instead sticking with the established look of predominantly red and black, with white and grey trim.

But what they have done, at least, is change it up a little bit – in the first revealed pic (left) it looks less different from last year’s, with only the altered nose pattern standing out, but in profile view (right) we can more clearly see that it now takes on a diagonal, striped pattern. It’s at least distinctive, even if it looks a little bit too much like Dennis the Menace’s jumper, and even though it’s a shame the red now looks as orangey as it does, as the darker-looking shade on the 2010 car seemed to suit it a lot better. It is, just about, an improvement on last year – even with those slightly odd, blocky, boxed race numbers on the sidepods and nose tip, and even with the fairly awkward Marussia logo on the engine cover. And like many current cars, it could do with some more sponsors on its profile, but that’s a general F1 malaise rather than being specific to this team.

Not fantastic, then, but not terrible either – and at least, unlike many around them, the team actually seem bothered about freshening up the livery each year…