Given their rich history within the sport of Formula One, McLaren from time to time the team give their long standing fans a blast from the past with a nostalgic livery.
At the recent Indy500, the three McLaren cars ran colour schemes to represent its historic triple crown win which includes victories in the Indy 500, Monaco Grand Prix and Le Mans 24 Hours.
McLaren tribute liveries Indy500
The most eye-catching tribute livery was the iconic orange-and-white Marlboro scheme, which was a fan favourite in F1 for over a decade on cars of Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Niki Lauda.
Felix Rosenqvist sported this colour scheme which was the exact replica of the MP4/2 in which Alain Prost won the 1986 Monaco Grand Prix.
Pato O’Ward’s #5 machine was dressed in full black as a throwback to McLaren’s 1995 Le Mans win. That year the brand’s all-black, Gordon Murray-designed McLaren F1 GTR triumphed in the hands of Yannick Dalmas, JJ Lehto and Masanori Sekiya.
The #7 car of Alexander Rossi was draped in papaya and blue to celebrate McLaren’s 1976 Indy 500 win, which saw Johnny Rutherford take his second Indy victory in a rain-shortened race aboard the McLaren M16.
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In Formula One a team’s cars must run the same livery unlike Indycar, and so the same weekend in Monaco the McLaren F1 car ran a colour scheme which combined the three adorning the Indy500 entrants.
The response was not universally appreciative however, it appears McLaren may have something up their sleeve for their fans during the upcoming British Grand Prix weekend.
Monday morning McLaren released a short video of Lando Norris peeking around a corner and seeing something for the first time. It had the caption, “What has Lando Norris seen? All will be revealed…”
What has @LandoNorris seen? All will be revealed…
👀 @google #googlechrome pic.twitter.com/vtZuCFSo5a
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) July 3, 2023
Throwback to Hamilton rookie year
The chrome livery which represented the era of the Vodafone sponsorship was voted recently by the Goodwood Racing publication to be one of the top 6 ever from the Woking based team.
In particular whilst the 2007 season was tumultuous for the team with reigning champion Fernando Alonso joining the rookie Lewis Hamilton, McLaren had picked up the sponsorship of Vodafone.
The addition of the Vodafone red to the new chrome livery from 2006 was an instant hit an now is iconic amongst the Lewis Hamilton fans.
2007 was a year of drama for McLaren with Fernando Alonso not taking kindly to the stern challenge his upstart team-mate was putting up.
The year of ‘spygate’
This together with Alonso’s perception that Lewis was favoured by team boss Ron Dennis saw a civil war break out within the team.
Though the biggest trauma was to come as ‘Spygate’ evolved. McLaren were accused of using documents stolen from Ferrari and fined a record $100m and thrown out of the constructors’ championship.
A return to the Chrome livery in Silverstone will not only evoke emerges of better ties for the McLaren fans but also gives a nice tip of the hat to their Sponsor whose web browser of course is called “Chrome.”
McLaren last ran the chrome livery in 2015 before moving to black later in the year.
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Oscar Piastri nailing 'The Office' camera look after this jet-pack mishap! 😂
Glad to see the jet-pack flier in good spirits after too 😊#AustrianGP #F1 @OscarPiastri @McLarenF1 pic.twitter.com/AUwS04whpd
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 2, 2023
