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.

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!

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?)

So: there’s increasing noise around the possibility that finally, finally, McLaren might be about to give the people what they want – namely (a) an actually new livery and (b) one that’s partly or entirely orange. With the departure of noted livery-phobe Ron Dennis, the team’s executive director Zak Brown has been quoted as saying “We’ve just signed off on the car livery and I think the fans will be excited to find out what the car looks like both technically and visually.”

Now, to be fair, I don’t actually hate the black and red livery the team ran with last season – it was certainly an improvement on the ridiculous thing they started 2015 with, and with a few more sponsors and some exciting flourishes, it could really have worked. But the problem with the team is that it’s never felt like they’ve put much thought into their livery over the past few years – something we’ve been disappointed by given that they’re responsible for some of the most iconic liveries in F1 history. Under Dennis, the edict seemed to be that change for change’s sake simply wouldn’t be countenanced – so a “default” silver and red livery, despite the departure of West, Vodafone and Mercedes over the course of a decade, was something he was happy to stick with.

But for twenty years, now, the idea of McLaren painting a modern car in the classic orange of Bruce McLaren’s 1960s cars has been a persistent myth – and to be fair to us fans who keep clamouring for it, the team brought it on entirely themselves. Because it was they who first started running their test cars in it, after the end of the Marlboro deal in 1997. Before unveiling the classic “Silver Arrows”, Mercedes-driven livery, they laid out their sponsors on an orange test car, and everyone went nuts for it. So then they did it all over again when the West deal expired, before introducing the 2006-onwards “chrome” livery.

We hoped they might go orange in 2014, but they stuck with a very plain silver instead; and when Mercedes were replaced by Honda in 2015, they hinted at a red and white car (neatly tying in not just with the Japanese engine company, but with their classic Marlboro stylings) before unveiling that thing. So why does everyone think it might be orange this time?

Well, because of this:

The clock is ticking… and the countdown to our 2017 car launch on Friday February 24th begins. pic.twitter.com/5qNSqfVLtw

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) January 16, 2017

The pattern on the picture resembles the scheme they put on a showcar while at an event for sponsor Richard Mille this week:

… but the fact that they’ve included it, and the orange text, in their launch date announcement suggests that orange will be a part of it in some way. Now, this might not mean an entirely orange car. It could mean taking the 2016 livery and replacing the red bits with orange, or doing something like this:

(concept by the ever-excellent Sean Bull)

Or they could have a new sponsor entirely, and with it something completely new. We’ll find out when they launch the car on 24th February. And yes, if it’s black or silver, you will probably be able to hear our scream of anger from space.

1997 was the year this scheme took F1 by storm, and 1998 was the year it won its first title. But 1999 was when it looked its best. The lines of the Adrian Newey-designed car had become increasingly sculpted, and it felt like the livery and car were working in harmony together – they’d done so in 1998, too, but it was even more the case in ’99. It looked better with a 1 and a 2 on it than a 7 and 8, too.

Well, we had to get the classic-style Marlboro McLaren in there somewhere, and while the later 1980s versions are arguably slightly more iconic, this is the one that manages to stand out above other cars of its year. It is actually still one of the better ones, too – a wider car suits the chevron pattern well, and it’s uncluttered by unnecessary additional logos or colours.

The first season of McLaren’s record-breaking sponsorship tie-up with Marlboro saw the cars looking quite different from the eventual, and more iconic design; but this was still a quite striking shift for the team. The dual title sponsors have essentially the same colour scheme, meaning the whole thing works harmoniously; and while the black-with-white-outlines text on the red background probably wouldn’t be allowed now due to television visibility, it looks great.

The grid became increasingly more colourful in 1969, but the best-looking car out there was one that actually retained its previous paint job. Like the red Ferrari, there’s something about the orange McLaren that looks intentional rather than simply being based around a country’s chosen colour. The car is actually improved by the addition of a few sponsor logos – it looks racy and aggressive. Why would you need to change it just because a new regulation allowed it?

First up it’s McLaren, who it’s fair to say we’ve given a significant amount of stick to for their liveries ever since their Vodafone deal ended. But this 2016 effort… well, it’s certainly the best they’ve had since the chrome job went away:

You still get the sense that Ron Dennis feels like livery designs and sponsorship are something that should happen to other teams, not his. But if we accept that we’re never going to get either a white/red Marlboro homage nor an orange McLaren ever again, then this is an ongoing team identity that’s much easier to get behind than the terribly bland silver and black that preceded it. Certainly, if they’d launched with this back at the start of 2014, I think we’d all have been a lot more favourable about it and them. Can they give us some more interesting team uniforms to go with it, though?

On to Mercedes, then, who unsurprisingly stick with the silver-with-black-and-turquoise that’s served them so well so far. Again, though, this might be the best implementation of it that they’ve yet had:

And finally, we come to Williams, who unsurprisingly have made basically no tweaks whatsoever to their 2015 livery, despite some minor changes in sponsorship placement:

 

And of course, we’ve had another team launch their car today… but we’ll have more on that one a bit later.