The race livery is a fascinating thing.
Superficially speaking, it is nothing but an advertising hoarding, designed implicitly to raise brand awareness and to ‘sex up’ whichever company happens to slap their logo across a car’s bows.
In reality, this is nonsense. A great livery can transform people’s perception of a car, team or driver.
In days gone by, the liveries adopted by F1 teams were a massive deal, because the rewards for getting it right were huge. Think Marlboro McLarens, JPS Lotuses, Martini Brabhams and, even in the ‘modern’ era – Mild Seven Renaults and Benson and Hedges Jordans. I hesitate to use the term, but they were all truly iconic.
An innovative livery wasn’t just a rolling billboard. It was an art form.
Now compare that with the sorry sight of McLaren in recent years. Ron Dennis might bang on all he likes about his company being too rich and too grand to need a title sponsor, but I beg to differ. For a man so brutally obsessed with detail to have that gaudy SAP logo hastily slapped across the nose of the MP4 29 a couple of years back, is disturbing.
You’d have thought that after the wallpaper-paste 2014 livery, Woking would have dug deeper last year, especially given the onset of a new era with Honda. Would the Japanese manufacturer’s input be reflected in McLaren’s colouring? Perhaps a brilliant white (the traditional racing colour of Japan) would make an appearance.
Err, not quite. In fact, in launch spec it was possibly the messiest F1 livery of recent times. Certainly worse than its 2014 effort. Apparently it was supposed to be recognisably McLaren, whilst acknowledging the partnership with Honda. The problem is however, does McLaren want its signature to be a drab silver and gaudy red? The rocket red of Vodaphone was successful because it conjured memories of the similarly striking Marlboro liveries. The MP4 30, meanwhile, conjured memories of a mid-noughties McLaren viewed through the bottom of a pint glass. It was terrible.
I think it goes deeper than a botched committee meeting in McLaren’s marketing department, though. Undoubtedly, it reflects the Woking squad’s public soul-searching over the past few years, but it would be unfair to single out a lone team. No constructor has boasted a truly memorable livery during the past half decade. Formula One is limping on at the moment, trading on past glories. In the same way that the racing has descended into a gimmicky mess and the personalities involved possess the collective charisma of gravel, liveries have become dull, confusing and severely lacking in imagination. It’s the little things that are always the most telling when it comes to people’s mind-sets, and a grey, in-distinctive grid says more about the state of Grand Prix racing than the meandering strategy group ever could.
Formula One has run out of creative steam. That unpredictable, rock n’ roll attitude has been neutered by corporate PR and management speak. It was the rebels that gave the sport a purpose, not green credentials. Bernie Ecclestone didn’t decide to aquire the television rights in 1976 for the sake of Johnny Polar Bear and Lewis Hamilton’s Instagram. It was because of Niki Lauda and James Hunt. The gaudy cigarette logos. Tearaway drivers — the unstable misfits who found solace in the crazy, psychedelic bubble of the Grand Prix circus. Thanks to the inevitable march of time they have been replaced with an army of David Brents.
Regrettably, things don’t seem to be getting any better. Why on earth did Renault decide to launch its exciting new era as a constructor by painting the RS.16 in fifty shades of black? Where was the signature RenaultSport yellow? The team is hinting that this could change for the season opener in Australia, but I honestly don’t see the point in this. Renault understandably want to keep things on the down-low during testing, what with an underdeveloped chassis and flagging power-train to pin its hopes to, but black? It was the return of a Grand Prix great, one with so much rich colour and history. It could afford a little more yellow on launch day, surely.
The sport doesn’t need DRS, rain sprinklers and reversed grids to win back fans. It needs Marlboro, Gitanes and a serious wake-up call.
Carboretta 