OPINION: The FIA needs to do something about F1’s one-off liveries

Sure, it’s not all about sponsorship and marketing, McLaren has got into a routine of celebrating its heritage with its special paint jobs, but as I see more and more of these, the less enthused by them I get. It’s high time we were presented with something a little more exciting.

The biggest problem these days is that there are just too many of them. In much the same way Christmas would not be anywhere near as exciting if it happened every month, the intrigue of a one-off livery is greatly diminished when you see three of them in one weekend.

Let’s look at this latest batch of designs set to run under the floodlights at the Singapore Grand Prix. Mercedes is running a turquoise variation of its standard livery to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of major partner Petronas. Makes sense, the Malaysian brand celebrates the closest thing to a home grand prix this weekend. I think the end result looks great, too, but in the grand scheme it’s just a straight colour swap from silver to green, which is a bit dull. It’s also a guaranteed headache for the poor commentators who will be seeing four Aston Martins out on track for the next three days.

Then we have McLaren, the worst offender when it comes to oversaturating the market, who has collaborated with crypto brand OKX for this particular colour scheme which once again harks back to the Marlboro liveries of old. At this point, the concept of paying homage to its iconic MP4 era has been done to death. A bit of fan service is no bad thing, I love reminiscing about McLaren’s golden era, but all too often the liveries the team comes up with to ride this particular wave are horribly underwhelming.

Frankly, the less said about RB’s effort for this weekend the better. At least it’s original, I guess.

The idea of special-edition car designs is nothing new, Ferrari won the 1964 world championship with John Surtees running a NART-liveried 158 while the team protested against the Automobile Club d'Italia and McLaren ran a Marlboro Light livery with Keke Rosberg for the 1986 Portuguese Grand Prix, but it didn’t become a regular concept until Red Bull starting producing one-off designs in the late 2000s.

Since then the practice has become commonplace, with teams seemingly more often than not arriving at a race weekend with a bespoke colour scheme in some shape or form.

That’s not to say they’re all bad. We have of course seen some very agreeable designs over the years. McLaren perfected the art with its Gulf livery for the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix, Alpine’s recent Deadpool & Wolverine idea was striking, too, as was Ferrari’s sumptuous 1,000^th grand prix celebration for the 2020 Tuscany Grand Prix.

Ferrari, though, has been a major player in my growing disdain for these liveries. If you’re going to shout about giving your car a new lick of paint, it had better be worth my attention, whether I love it or hate it. Maranello’s recent form of promising big things, only to swap a small strip of yellow for a small strip of blue, is utterly infuriating.

What’s stopping these teams from producing something genuinely arresting? Of course, the simple answer is that most teams are far more interested in making the car faster rather than spending unnecessary resources on making it look pretty, Red Bull’s decision to scrap its own livery plans for Singapore is case in point, but then why bother at all?

Fan engagement is a critical aspect of modern F1, and these one-off liveries are a key element of that, but the focus seems geared increasingly towards the clothing lines that accompany them. It leads the cynic in me to assume that the true goal of these activations is simply to sell ever more expensive merchandise to a fanbase that’s already getting rinsed by ever-rising ticket prices.

Looking forward to new liveries and fresh car designs is a major element of F1 fandom that we all enjoy, but I’ve found my enthusiasm waning dramatically in recent seasons.

The only answer to this spreading plague is to limit each team to a single one-off livery per season. One opportunity each year to make a big song and dance about a valued partner or an important anniversary. Not only would they recover a bit of their interest, but the teams might also work a little harder on designing something genuinely exceptional.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.