McLaren chief Zak Brown says the response to its one-off Monaco livery last year provided some of the inspiration for the evolution of its colour scheme for 2022.
McLaren presented its MCL36 on Friday evening, with the ‘Fluro Papaya’ that was first run in Monaco featuring on the car, accented by ‘New Blue’, marking a deviation from the MCL35M scheme.
McLaren ran a Gulf-inspired livery as a one-off at last year’s Monaco Grand Prix and Brown says the reaction to that provided the outfit with an idea for its 2022 colours.
“We’ve been evolving our livery since we’ve gone back to papaya,” said Brown, referring to the base McLaren colour that was utilised from 2017.
“We wanted something that was very vibrant, so we changed the shade of our papaya, it’s darker but the livery changes we did last year in Monaco and Abu Dhabi we got a lot of great fan reaction.
“I think it’s got some nice speeded elegance to it, that we thought would go on top of the fast race car that hopefully we’ve designed this year!
“So it’s a natural evolution and trying to make sure we give our corporate partners [the space] to stand out.”
The launch of McLaren’s MCL36 coincided with the unveiling of its liveries for its IndyCar team and new-for-2022 Extreme E outfit.
While Pato O’Ward’s scheme is slightly different, owing to IndyCar regulations, the livery for Felix Rosenqvist’s car and McLaren’s Extreme E machine is relatively aligned with the MCL36.
“We’re McLaren Racing and Formula 1 is clearly our centre of gravity if you like but I think as a single racing entity if we can tie our racing programmes together…,” he said.
“The reason Pato’s is different is you’re not allowed to have identical cars [in IndyCar] like in Formula 1.
“I think they both look fantastic, together with Extreme E and esports, to be able to look at them and go ‘yep that’s a McLaren’, regardless of what racing series you’re looking at.”
The problem with Zak Brown in this area is he obviously has no background in art, and it shows; hence McLaren (along with his non-F1 racing teams) looking so bush league since 2017, down to the uniforms. The tacky neon pumpkin orange and blue screams insurance or credit card company, not iconic motor racing team and car manufacture. This new livery looks like something from a junior open-wheel series, or even NASCAR. Ron Dennis is very knowledge when it comes to art, and also has a good eye for it, which is why McLaren used to possess a very refined elegance and were always associated with high-end brands. McLaren’s true colors are black, rocket red and silver/chrome. McLaren Orange (“Rylands Traffic Yellow”, which is not even close to “papaya”/pumpkin as Brown seems to think) was only ever used for two years in 1968 and 1969 in F1, despite the importance some want to place on it. It has little to no significance to McLaren’s history in F1 unlike rocket red. And of course the first McLaren race car in 1966 was white and black with a green nose, followed by red with white numbers in 1967, then the two orange cars before a return to red/white/black for the next 19 years before silver and then chrome were added to the mix in 1996. Other than 1966, 1968 and 1969 and 2017-2022, every McLaren had red on it. Yes, there were also orange McLarens outside of Formula 1, but those were very short-lived as well, and what does that have to do with F1?
I just don’t understand why Brown had to destroy the image of one of the most iconic car brands in all of history.
I like this new design. I like orange in any shade. IMHO rocket red was never a McLaren color, it was Marlboro color. In fact McLaren team has been wiped away by the Marlboro/Dennis/Project 4 buy out in 1980-something.