How can F1 improve liveries to make cars stand out?

After a disappointing 2024 carbon fibre era, F1 will encourage car liveries that help viewers differentiate between teams.

Arguably, the 2024 team livery reveals somewhat disappointed F1 fans. With weight saving in mind, teams opted for lightweight carbon fibre over heavier paintwork. Thus, multiple car designs featured a majority of exposed black carbon fibre and minimal team colours.

Where colours were used, an unfortunate similarity has occurred. This is particularly noticeable when viewing the blue used on the VCARB 01 of RB and the FW46 of Williams on track from above. The design of Alpine’s A524 can also look similar to the Williams cars at certain angles.

What can Formula 1 do?

To attempt to make cars more distinguishable on track, Formula 1 will raise the topic for further debate at the next F1 Commission meeting. In addition, the FIA is currently discussing the issue with all the F1 teams.

Speaking to Autosport, the Director of the Single Seater Department of the FIA, Nikolas Tombazis shared that the solution may not be simple. He said:

“As always in F1, it is a bit more complicated than maybe meets the eye.”

The FIA Director outlined the problems F1 faces in tackling this issue. He explained that weight saving will always be the priority for design teams:

“One issue is that cars have a bit too much naked carbon, because obviously the weight of paint, so the cars have a bit too much black. There has also been a lot of work done by all teams to change the type of paint or indeed a lot of it nowadays is extremely thin films, to keep the weight as low as possible.”

Additionally, Tombasizis acknowledged the problem with team branding and similar colour schemes. He stated:

“And another issue is that some teams seem to use similar colour schemes, so they end up with cars that maybe look visually quite close to each other.

They do not want to create livery regulations

Tombasizis clarified that Formula 1 management and the FIA want to avoid regulating car liveries and would prefer the teams to solve the issue through communication. As reported by Autosport, he said:

“We need to get to some process where teams in some way or other communicate with each other and say: ‘Well, if your car is blue here, mine will not be blue there.’ Or something like that.”

He added that:

“It’s not a regulatory process. We don’t want to be making regulations about liveries as the FIA, but we do want cars to be distinguishable. […] We do want to get in a place where somehow teams see it as the common good that the cars can be recognisable.”

Telling teammates apart

Not only do the cars of different teams look too similar in 2024, but it is harder to distinguish between two drivers in the same team. When an F1 car is travelling at high speed on track, it becomes impossible for viewers to identify the driver’s number on the front and side of their car. Instead, the only noticeable difference from afar is driver helmet designs – particularly with colour schemes.

For example, Mercedes drivers – Lewis Hamilton and George Russell – have different colour schemes for their helmets which are distinguishably different colours. Hamilton wears a neon yellow helmet, while Russell opted for a light blue helmet design.

Sometimes the angle of the W15 prevents the viewer from noticing key differences as it passes by at speed. Differences include the driver number and colour scheme accent in the livery design and the car marker above the driver’s head (one neon and the other black). Therefore, when these differences cannot be seen, the neon yellow or blue helmets should stand out.

For other drivers, their helmet design or colour may not be as bold or different as their teammate’s. Thus drivers can be confused with one another. This creates an issue for audiences, both in person at the track and via the broadcast on television.

Helmet design changes

However, even colour differences may not be enough. Since regulations changes allowed drivers to introduce special helmet designs throughout the season, they are sometimes less distinguishable. A driver may not always have the same colour scheme they are known for in their one-off helmet livery design. They may also have different helmet designs and colours throughout the season.

charles really gave us three special helmet designs in a row and they’re all amazing!!! pic.twitter.com/q6javLEubG

— morg ?? (@16predestinatos) May 23, 2024

Speaking about driver helmet design, Tombasizis told Autosport:

“It used to be, of course, drivers had more recognisable helmets in the olden days because there were simpler designs. And they were like that probably for the whole career. Now there is a change of regulations and they’ve got all these funny shades, plus you don’t see the helmet anyway because of the halo.”

Again, Tombasizis clarified that the FIA does not want to enforce regulations for this. They hope that F1 teams will collaborate to improve the current issue.

Max’s 2024 helmet, coming ?? pic.twitter.com/CUElZ4wfix

— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) February 7, 2024

Featured Image Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images on Red Bull Content Pool