2024 F1 liveries ranked from worst to best

But while half of the grid have clearly struggled to keep the weight of their cars down, resorting to stripping the paint off the chassis to save every last gram, others, notably those traditionally towards the front of the grid have clearly done a better job of slimming down their challengers. Or perhaps they’re so confident in their performance that they figure a bit of extra weight won’t bother them.

We’ve seen all of the cars now, the F1 class of 2024 is complete, so now the only proper thing to do is pick our favourites. Ten cars, ten brand new (for the most part) liveries, which team has done it best?

10. Alpine

This is something of a two-pronged attack on the Alpine livery for 2024. The team shot itself in the foot with this one, because the A524 F1 car was launched alongside the A424 Hypercar that’ll take part in the WEC this season. And the Hypercar shows us what Alpine could have done with its F1 livery if it could actually put some paint on the car, which makes this abomination all the worse. If we're being honest it's the FIA and its rulebook to blame for this, rather than the team, who we're sure would rather be fielding a car that looks as good as possible.

Secondly, is the audacity Alpine had to ‘reveal’ its ‘second’ pink ‘livery’ that it will run at select races in 2024. Featuring the same infuriating lack of pigment on the bodywork, the flashes of blue splatted around the car have been switched to pink. In all this is a horrible disappointment for a team that has delivered some punchy liveries in the past.

9. Haas

As implementations of black and white go, the Haas VF-24 does at least do a pretty good job of looking sleek and tidy. But to be honest, if it weren’t for the stark disappointment of Alpine’s non-livery, this car would be at the bottom of the list. It’s just a bit bland, and doesn’t shout of a car that’s going to be majorly fast either. Is this a purposefully understated livery to try and turn attention away from what might be another underwhelming season? Let’s hope not.

We also can’t ignore the fact that this is once again a livery largely devoid of paint. The engine cover and sidepods are entirely bare carbon aside from the stick-on sponsor graphics. Quite infuriatingly the nose, which is painted, has been coloured black as well. They didn’t even make the most of the paint they did use!

8. McLaren

This is another painful one to look at, because again, we know what could have been with this car. The sooner the rule makers can get these cars down to a sensible weight the better. McLaren has a recent history of developing some fairly hectic and generally unattractive liveries, but aside from the busy designs, we just wish it would actually use the papaya paint it spends so much time telling us about. Take the McLaren F1 Academy car as a case in point, imagine if the MCL38 was as bold and brilliant as that?

At least from the front this McLaren does look as though it’s painted in full papaya, but as soon as you get that side shot you’re greeted with a face full of bare, unpainted carbon-fibre. It’s not dreadful, just not as cool as it could be.

7. Red Bull

This one gets to jump ahead of the bottom three simply because it actually has some paint on it. It’s just a shame it’s exactly the same paint we’ve seen for the past 20 years. That’s right, Red Bull Racing in F1 turns 20 in 2024, and the car has changed very little in that time. It’s clean, it’s recognisable, and it does the job of showcasing the Red Bull brand to the world. But in terms of giving us spectators a bit of excitement? Absolutely none of it.

I seem to remember saying this last year… but the Red Bull livery always strikes me as the epitome of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, and in the case of the RB20, why would you change anything from the dominance RB19? Clearly the rest of the design team haven’t taken that onboard, because the car underneath the paintwork has undergone a radical overhaul. The livery’s fine, we’ve just seen it before… 19 times.

6. Williams

We’re getting to the middle of the list now, and the Williams livery this year fits the bill. This feels about as middle of the road as it’s possible to be. It’s clean, it’s simple and it works, but there’s no excitement to be found here on the FW46.

It is a pretty mix of blues, though and the orange stripe along the side of the nose is a welcome dose of contrast to what is otherwise a very comfortable and safe colour scheme. It’s also still a touch disappointing that the team has again refused to lean into its ties with Gulf. Even after we were teased with the special edition livery at the end of last season, here we are back again with something far less visually arresting. The Duracell roll hoop remains the best part of any car on the grid though.

5. Aston Martin

This feels bad that the gorgeous green of the Aston Martin AMR24 has been demoted just fifth in our livery rankings for 2024, but that speaks more of the designs above it than this still very beautiful car. That green is still stunning, and will look utterly fantastic under the lights in Bahrain and the like, all the more so thanks to the sculpted engine cover catching the light over and over again.

It is a bit of a shame, though, that from the front this car looks incredibly paint-free. The front wing is bare carbon, as is the top surface of the sidepods, so there’s actually far less green to see than we had last season. It’s for that reason that this car drops down to a mid-table position.

4. RB

Say what you like about Visa Cash App RB, sure the name is a bit ungainly, and we’ll be doing everything in our power to never call it that again, but the car itself looks absolutely ace. Harking back to the Toro Rosso of 2018, that purply blue pops like a firework, especially when accentuated by the vibrant red trim and the white ribbon across the nose.

This car makes us feel very good about the look of F1 in 2024. A brand-new look on the grid is always very exciting, and this is about as good as we could have hoped for from a team that sounds on the face of it like a horrible concoction of corporate bureaucracy. Let’s just hope VISA’s time in F1 goes a little better than a certain global competitor in 1997…

3. Sauber

Now. We’ve spent a good chunk of this list bemoaning the plague of carbon-fibre currently poisoning the colour palette of F1, but now we’re going to back pedal slightly and give this new Sauber C44 a free pass. The loss of Alfa Romeo is a sad one for enthusiasts who appreciate the history of F1 and the heritage that manufacturer represents. Every cloud, because in the place of something old comes something very, very new. Sauber is back, and good grief is it back with a bang.

Aside from the relentless signposting to a particular gambling brand that appears to be mentioned at least ten times on the bodywork of this car, this car looks absolutely epic. From the front especially, this car is going to absolutely shine out on the track, and when we’re all sat worrying that all of the cars are going to be near impossible to identify from each other, Sauber comes out with something unique. It’s different, it’s fun, and it’s incredibly cool, even giving off some 1996 Minardi vibes with the luminous green wings. It is a shame about the amount of carbon-fibre on display though, and for that we do mark it down slightly. #Unleashed indeed, now let’s just hope it’s quick.

2. Mercedes

Back down to earth now, and to something a little more understated, but no less cool. Mercedes confirmed it would be alternating its livery design going forward from black to silver on consecutive years. After the black of the W14, we were expecting this W15 to go silver in 2024, and it has, mostly. It turns out that actually a bit of half-and-half was exactly what we needed, because this is brilliant.

First and foremost, it looks fast. There’s a bit of late-‘90s McLaren going on here, and we have a lot of time for that. The Petronas green always looks stunning with the silver backdrop and the red flashes offer another layer of contrast that does plenty to our eye. If the car’s as good as it looks, Mercedes might be sending Lewis Hamilton off to Ferrari in the best possible way.

1. Ferrari

And finally, taking the spoils for best F1 livery in 2024 is Ferrari, because the yellow is back, and it looks absolutely phenomenal. It’s more subtle than we were hoping for, with just the thin ribbon across the nose and around the sidepods, but coupled with a second strip of white it’s enough to make this Ferrari livery pop more than it has in a while.

The way the red is woven into the front and rear wings deserves a mention, too, and then there's the wheel covers, which are the best on the grid by a mile. This new red is more sumptuous than the previous shade, too, its warmth works perfectly with the yellow to just brighten up our day. Generally, we just have a lot of time for this new design, and we can’t wait to see it in action. We also quietly hope that this Ferrari is still overweight, but the team has simply refused to strip it back to the bare-carbon because everybody knows a Ferrari has to be red. Either way, this is by far the best-looking car on the 2024 F1 grid.