Yahoo Autos Formula 1 Wants Liveries to Be More Differentiated
You are not imagining it: More than half the Formula 1 grid is using similar shades of blue, green, and bare carbon fiber black on their F1 cars this year. Mercedes, Red Bull, RB, Williams, Alpine, and Aston Martin all use some combination of dark blue or dark green accented by unpainted black sections on their current race cars, leaving a wide variety of combos that can be confused for one another. Formula 1 now reportedly recognizes this problem, and an FIA representative says that discussions to come to a solution are on the way.
The heart of the issue starts with the current minimum weight requirements for an F1 car, which are currently lower than teams can easily meet. That means constructors need to find a way to save weight somewhere, and removing relatively heavy full-color wrap to leave more bare carbon fiber on the car has been a popular solution for most of the grid.
While the identical black accents would already create some confusion among fans, the problem is made worse because four of those teams (Williams, Alpine, Red Bull, and RB) use a dark blue as their primary color or accent shade alongside the black and two others (Aston Martin and Mercedes) use a blue-tinted shade of green. That leaves 12 cars on a 20-car grid working with the same or similar colors, and most teams make the problem worse by removing the colored wrap in the same places where the wrap is at its heaviest.
As FIA single-seater lead Nikolas Tombazis told Autosport, the organization is aware of this problem and trying to fix it. The solution will apparently be left to the teams after collaborative discussions rather than changed to a new rule that could restrict liveries if they are too similar. Tombazis says he will raise the issue in a future F1 Commission, hopefully in time to implement a fix before teams design their 2025 liveries in the upcoming offseason.
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