A guest article by Greg “Ned Flanders” Morland

Some F1 liveries are iconic. The ‘rosso corsa’ Ferrari, as used for decades. The red and white Marlboro McLaren, raced by legends such as Senna and Prost. The variations of the blue and white colour scheme used by Williams during their glory years in the ’80s and ’90s. The Silver Arrows Mercedes which was synonymous with both Mercedes in the ’50s and McLaren over 40 years later.

But not all designs reach this level of prominence. Some are consigned to the dustbin after no more than one or two events. Some are never raced at all. Others are never even intended to be raced! Created for reasons as varied as charity promotion, sponsorship changes and regulation disputes, this is a collection of obscure F1 liveries.

Red Bull 2004/ 2005

When Red Bull bought the Jaguar team in November 2004, they had just a few days to come up with an all new livery in time for their first pre season tests. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the result was hardly an imaginative design- it was little more than a combination of the logos from their days at Sauber and the design of a Red Bull can. Yet in many ways it was a superior livery to the permanent design which soon replaced it (and which is still in use today) with a lighter shade of blue and far more silver.

Spyker, 2007

To some F1 fans, the purchase of the Midland team by Dutch car company Spyker in late 2006 meant only one thing- the return of orange to the grid. But Spyker’s livery designers would prove remarkably indecisive. Despite lasting barely 12 months in the sport, they came up with 3 different variations of their orange colour scheme.

The only one of the three not to race was the livery unveiled at the team launch in early 2007. However, it was ditched within a few weeks… because it was too orange! In fact, it appeared almost red on camera. Before the first race of the season in Australia it was replaced with a duller, more TV friendly shade of orange

British American Racing, 1999

If you get the feeling you recognise these two liveries, it’s because you’ve probably already seen them. Or at least half of each…

British American Racing’s attitude towards their first season in F1 was, to put it mildly, somewhat overconfident. Their slogan was ‘a tradition of excellence’- a strange boast for a team which had never raced before- and team principal Craig Pollock declared them capable of winning their first Grand Prix at Melbourne. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team failed to score a single point all season. In fact, it took the team 133 races to finally win a race- by which point its name had been changed to Honda, and Pollock was long gone…

Yet perhaps the biggest controversy in BAR’s debut season was their insistence on running separate liveries on each car in an attempt to promote two different cigarette brands, despite a specific clause in the FIA regulations forbidding it. The team’s attempt at overturning the law at the European Commission failed, Pollock was forced to make a grudging apology to the FIA and the love it/ hate it zip line livery was born.

Red Bull charity liveries, 2007 and 2008

Red Bull have taken advantage of their lack of outside sponsorship by twice ditching their usual livery in order to promote their charity Wings for Life. At the 2007 British GP, their unique idea was to allow fans to buy a small spot on their cars to place a picture of themselves, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity in the process.

The brown and white design produced for David Coulthard’s swansong at the 2008 Brazilian GP was far less innovative, and after Coulthard’s retirement just a few moments into the race, it was quickly forgotten. However, it did mark the first occasion in several years that two cars from the same team had raced in different liveries.

Orange Mclaren testing livery, 1997 and 2006

Nowadays, when we think of colours associated with McLaren, we think either silver, or red and white- two colour schemes that McLaren have used almost exclusively for decades. But it hasn’t always been this way. Back in the ’60s, before the onset of sponsorship liveries in F1, McLarens were orange.

Although the 21st century McLaren bears little resemblance to the outfit established almost half a century ago, it has retained the orange colour scheme for occasional use. Though sponsorship deals with Marlboro, West and Vodafone have taken precedence, McLaren have run their cars in orange in pre season testing before both the 1997 and 2006 seasons. And with the current tensions between McLaren and engine supplier Mercedes, they could yet be coloured orange again in the future.

Renault anniversary livery, 2007

To commemorate their 30th anniversary in F1, Renault painted their 2007 car, the R26, in the Renault’s traditional sporting colours of yellow and black. It proved far more popular than the team’s regular orange, yellow and white livery, but due to sponsorship commitments with ING, it was never raced. However, following ING’s withdrawal from F1 in the aftermath of the Singapore race fixing scandal, it seems likely that Renault will revert to a similar yellow and black design for the 2010 season.

Black nosed Ferrari, 2001

The Italian GP of 2001 was held just 5 days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, one of the first major international sporting events to be held in its aftermath. Most F1 teams ran some sort of tribute on their cars at Monza; Ferrari’s was the most obvious.

Toyota testing livery 2001

Toyota’s Formula One liveries came to symbolise the team itself: uninspiring, over-corporate and extremely boring. Throughout their 8 seasons in F1, they stuck to the same red and white ‘paint splash’ design which they had introduced in 2002. At the end of 2009, the Toyota executives back in Tokyo – perhaps out of shame of the livery- pulled the plug on the team.

Only once did Toyota produce a variation on this design. As the team prepared for racing with a year of testing in 2001, it used a predominantly red livery. Although hardly a classic, it would prove far more interesting than the design that succeeded it.

NART Ferrari, 1964

For the millions of members of the Tifosi scattered across the globe, the concept of a Ferrari painted in anything other than the traditional Rosso corsa is unthinkable. Yet in 1964, after a dispute with the Italian motorsport authorities, Ferrari was forced to temporarily abandon tradition. For the first (and only) time ever, the Scuderia competed in two races not in Italian Racing red but the blue and white colours used by the North American Racing Team. Though the car did not win either event, John Surtees clinched the drivers’ championship at the final round in Mexico, becoming the only Ferrari champion not to triumph in a red car.

MasterCard Lola, 1997

The short lived MasterCard Lola team have gone down in history as one of the most inept Formula One outfits of all time. Rushed into competing a year ahead of schedule in 1997 by title sponsors MasterCard, their cars were some 11 seconds off the pace at the only event they competed in, the 1997 Australian GP. Hardly surprising, given that they were adapted Indy Car’s which had barely been tested in wind tunnels never mind on the track. After failing to qualify in Melbourne, Lola were forced to quit before the following Grand Prix due to the £6 million worth of debt they had amassed, and they have never returned to F1 since.

The only credit in an utterly miserable project must go to the team’s vibrant, MasterCard inspired livery, arguably one of the best colour schemes of the late 90’s [Editor’s note: I agree!], despite never making it onto the grid.

Force India testing liveries, 2007/ 2008

In late 2007, the Silverstone based Spyker team was bought by Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya and rebranded Force India, its fourth different name in four years. One of his first acts as owner was to try and stamp an Indian identity on the team, and this meant the removal of the Dutch orange from the car.

Yet Force India, like Spyker before them, have found it difficult to come up with a decent Formula One livery. In the two years they have been in F1, Force India has created four different colour schemes, two of which have never even raced. Their first attempt, a smart white, maroon and gold design, was probably their best effort, but it was consigned to the dustbin within weeks. Its replacement, a unique white, gold and silver livery, was also a tidy effort, but by the start of the 2008 season it had been transformed by the McLaren- esque day-glo red paint covering the front and rear wings and the sidepods.

Marlboro Lights McLaren, 1986

One of the most iconic and popular F1 liveries ever created was the Marlboro McLaren. The red and white design graced 9 championship winning McLarens over three decades, before being unceremoniously ditched in 1996 as Marlboro defected to McLaren’s great rivals Ferrari.

At the 1986 Portuguese GP, for the first and only time ever, McLaren’s Keke Rosberg ran not in red but in a gold and white livery, designed to promote the new Marlboro Lights brand of cigarettes. However, as the gold came across on TV as yellow, and because Rosberg put in such an inauspicious performance in the race, the experiment was never repeated.

Anthony Davidson’s BAR Friday testers, 2004

Throughout the 2004 season, BAR took advantage of the fact that they were one of the teams permitted to run a third car and driver in Friday practice by having a bit of fun with the paint scheme of Anthony Davidson’s car (with the Friday cars not subject to the same strict regulations as the actual race cars). Most notably, for the Chinese GP, his car (along with the uniforms of all team personnel, including lead drivers Jenson Button and Takuma Sato) was decked out in a blue and yellow livery in order to promote cigarette brand 555 – calling to mind the abortive Ricardo Zonta car from 1999. Elsewhere, the Brazilian GP saw a “graffiti”-style paint job that included Davidson’s own face, and in Italy black “x-ray” effect – with a silhouette approximating to Ant’s seating position – adorned the monocoque and nose.

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