#30; Looking the Part – Top 5 F1 Liveries

If you’re an F1 fan, I’m sure you’ll agree that a car’s livery is mega important. Sure it has no technological advancement, no horsepower advantage, nothing like that, but it’s damned important I feel to a team. Seeing a livery you love, one that sticks out in your mind, something you remember for years to come shows just how important a livery can be for the identity of a team. Yes, it can all go horribly wrong and you can be remembered as an F1 team for all the wrong reasons, but never mind that. My top 5 liveries come from many different years, perhaps controversial to you, but I thought perhaps it would be nice to give out my list and explain what makes them so fantastically lovely to look at.

Starting at…

5) – Rothmans Williams 1996
 

How did anything relating to Jacques Villeneuve get in a top 5 of mine? Bizarre. Nevertheless, I had the pleasure of reminding myself how lovely the 1997 Williams was at Goodwood and it is simply a lovely car. In 1996 obviously performance wise it did the job for Damon Hill but what I love about the livery is the amount of colour it has but at the same time, none of them class to make it ugly to look at personally. The Rothmans brand is obviously relevant in making this so prominent in terms of the colours, but it really works so very well. Blue, white, gold and red? Yes please.

4) – Jordan Mugen-Honda 1998

Again, I feel incredibly wrong putting anything related to Eddie Jordan in my top 5 but look at this car. Just look at it. What the hell is that thing on the front nose? I haven’t a clue but my god, it is AWESOME. That’s all I can describe of the look of this car. It’s bright, it’s in your face, it’s simply shouts anger and everything and even though it wasn’t mildly impressive minus that insane race at Spa, I just loved the look of it. It’s nice and bright, for one, but with the contrasting black detail and various red related sponsors, it all just fits to make a lovely looking car I reckon. Why oh why did it have to be EJ’s though?

3) – Lotus Renault 1986

You definitely don’t need me to remind you who drove this beast of a car, and yet at the same time, brought out all the beauty within Formula 1 through his driving. Ayrton Senna is as much as a legend as this Lotus is, and visually, it’s incredible. A huge contrast to the other cars I have chosen, the livery simply has 2 colours – black and gold. Admittedly this was before I was born and what I know of the car comes from articles, images, and many, many videos of Formula 1 over the Lotus years but something about this particular car and this particular year just makes me love it. The contrasting look of a dark Black and a shimmering gold alongside each other just make it completely memorable.

 

2) – Jaguar Cosworth 2003
 

I’ll be honest. There were some absolutely gorgeous cars in 2003 – special mention to the Renault with that lovely blue and yellow flowing livery that just went so well both on the eyes and on the track, the Sauber Petronas with the blue and turquoise Red Bull sponsored livery, Honda’s Lucky Strike white and red beast that provided Jenson Button’s first ever pole, and a few others here and there. This Jaguar though, as average as it was performance wise, is an absolutely beauty. Just the racing green alone standing proud with that screaming Jaguar on the rear of the car being combined with the white and red streaks via the HSBC sponsorship just make me want to hug this car and tell it how good it looks. Will continue to stay in my good books for the visual loveliness of the livery for many years.

1) – Brawn GP 2009

Please don’t shout at me. Yes, I know you’re going to get to this number 1 and think ‘Oh come on!’ but I simply absolutely adore the Brawn livery. It shocked a lot of people at first when the team were finally revealed and that livery appeared on the Silverstone tests back in February, but my god, what a car. It’s a very bright livery with the main white theme obviously being present but it’s just something about those blindingly stunning yellow streaks with the black stroke around them that just made me fall in love with the Brawn’s visual design not long after I saw it for the first time. A lot of ‘fans’ of the team have come out of the woodwork since their success but how many of them, no doubt supporting simply for Jenson’s success, can say they absolutely adore this design? Yes, it is my favourite livery. Yes, I realise how controversial that may sound after 60 years of Formula 1 to be behind a 2009 livery. But… I simply refuse to ignore how much I love Brawn ’s livery. Simple. Elegant. Bright. Brawn.

So that’s my own top 5 liveries of F1 concerning what I know, what I’ve seen and what I watched. I’m sure lots of you are shouting at your computer screens right now asking why on earth I’ve chosen this and that, but I’d love to hear what you think about a top 5 or what you would choose. There’s so many options, so many possibilities, and so many opinions in the world that the combinations are endless!

Just as long as no one mentions the 1999 Winfield Williams car.

Strewth.