At the launch of the McLaren 2015 car, there was disappointment amongst fans at the relatively mundane livery.
Speaking at the Jerez test, Ron Dennis stated, “Our 2015 livery will change, but I’m not going to say when. This is the livery of McLaren. It has always been a combination of these colours – and it will only change for commercial reasons.
It won’t change just to make a few people in the company happier because they want it orange or they want it yellow.”
Dennis explained that McLaren would move away from its traditional colours were a commercial partner make it worth their while.
“It will be far more recognised if we suddenly come out with a lime green car – for the following reason- you will all know that we have a great deal of money coming in”.
Under the lights in Bahrain, the McLaren and Force India cars looked remarkably similar and their liveries relatively uninspiring. The colour scheme retains a lot of dark around the bottom of the car – a colour traditionally used to disguise details.
However, McLaren are set for a livery change this weekend coming in Barcelona. Adam Cooper reports Ron Dennis stating today, “We have revised our car’s livery, improving its visual impact, optimising it for not only bright sunshine but also for the floodlights increasingly used in twilight and night races.
The result is a dynamic, predatory, graphite grey colouration, complemented by McLaren-dayglo ‘speedmarks’ and keylines, reducing the reflection issues caused by our latest chrome-silver treatment.”
This is all well and good – but for fans of the Woking team are hoping for more in terms of performance and points on track.
Honda is bringing performance upgrades to Barcelona, though whether these are from the deployment of new ‘development tokens’ – or improvements to existing components is not yet clear.
McLaren have yet to score a point, though Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button have been close with P11 finishes at the chequered flag.
Grey? Again?
I understand all the sponsor arguments but grey was first introduced because of Merc. What’s the point in keeping this? What’s the point in reminding us the bad relationship between the two in their last year together? What’s the point in reminding a second rate Merc or FI?
Even if they don’t have a sponsor yet they could easily go for a white colour scheme since this is Honda’s colour.
What nonsense Ron!
The grey was originally brought in when they where sponsored by West Tobacco after Phillip Morris left, which then progressed to the chrome/silver which they developed with DuPont.
At the moment what colour they paint their cars, is the least of their worries..
DuPont?? They developed the paint with their partner Akzo Nobel.
I knew that, my mistake… I have DuPont on the brain…
Thank you for correcting my glaring error…😉
I know that there are more important things, but until us poor Macca fans see a clear day in terms of competitiveness, even a change in colour would be something, a tiny psychological boost, a new beginning.
Mr. McLaren78
I certainly agree with you that having the liberty of no title sponsor should enable McLaren’s creativity to shine.
I was going to suggest something creative using the national racing colors of the UK (green) and Japan (white, alternatively red disk on white).
Then I noticed that Bruce McLaren seemed to think the New Zealand racing colors are black with silver stripe, (wikipedia and bruce-mclaren.com). So… that surprised me! Has McLaren been staying true to their NZ roots?
On the otherhand, I can’t empathize with you on McLaren’s performance as they’ve shown an incredible rate of improvement, are one of only four factory teams, have a chassis that looks and performs very well, an excellent chief engineer stolen from Red Bull, and an excellent driver line-up to boot.
As a Williams fan, I’m a bit jealous, candidly.
Grey… exciting… two words that are synonymous
Wait……
Grey…
Perhaps this is an insight into Ron’s literary preferences; my wife assures me that “graphite” is one of the 50 shades of grey.
Grey..
Imagine that boardroom meeting…
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I’ve never understood why both team cars have to be painted the same; it would open more possibilities for sponsorship, as well as help fans identify drivers, if the teams could go with two different color schemes for the two cars.
Yet that compris gave us one of the most amazing liveries ever. Bar honda with their zipper car.
Rules. Remember BAR? They tried to split their paint scheme between 555 and Lucky Strike and got a slap on the wrist. So, they used a zipper scheme and put half of each scheme on both cars. And that was the last of that.
I know it’s the rules, I just wonder about the reasoning behind the rules. Allowing different paint schemes could improve sponsorship saleability.
I think allowing same team cars to use different colors and liveries would dilute the prestige of the team championship.
Also, OT but TheJudge13 is now in tenth spot in Google searches for ‘F1 Blog’.
What Ron really means is “The car is grey by my “cojones” until someone pay me a lot of money”
Good news for McHonda, any quantum leaps in performance for them though will (I believe) unfortunately lead to the scrutinisers taking an interest in said paint.
😒
Perhaps McLaren are so desperate, the board decided to try ‘go faster’ stripes in an effort to gain lap time, or at least give the impression they are going quicker 😜
Or some flames…….real or painted, either one would suffice.
Real flames are Honda’s department, aren’t they ?
I think Renault has that covered quite well for the moment.
I respect Ron’s decision to hold out and not underselling his title sponsorship. It will be short-term pain for them but in the long-term future sponsors will know they cant get title sponsorship on the cheap after an off year.
Mclaren will be back. Best driver pairing – check. Aggresive approach – check. And I am no Mclaren fan and think Button is overrated (especially in contract dollar terms)
I’m not so sure holding out is a good plan. They might be following the market down, always pricing themselves a bit too high so never making the sale in a falling market. I’ve seen people do this when trying to sell a house, always a little bit late with the price drop…….. and 12 months later the house is unsold but the price has dropped $50,000; if they had not been greedy and dropped the price $20,000 early on they would have been ahead of the game.
This has been going on at McLaren for quite a while, with announcements last season that sponsorship would soon appear, then that did not happen. It’s really true, something is worth exactly what another will pay for it; nothing less, nothing more. I think that is where McLaren is now, learning the real value of the sponsorship they wish to sell but not accepting that the F1 brand is tarnished.
Graphite grey – does that mean the bodywork has been ‘coloured in’ using an HB pencil ?
Could be worse, I suppose – specifying slate grey might have ended up with them using real slates……
Where is the FIA when you need it to regulate the urgent matter of cars changing their liveries during the season? Maybe this too should be banned now…
My guess is whilst honda is not up to speed, Returning to historical mchonda colours would perhaps put more pressure / limelight onto honda to perform?