Livery Rankings for 2023

00:00

t’s time for me to rank the: 2023

00:21

I’m going to be ranking the: 2023

00:42

Before we get into my rankings though, let’s be honest here, there were a lot of cars with a lot of black on them. I thought I would talk about this now before I get into all my rankings just because of the sheer number of cars that had black on them. I really don't wanna repeat myself every time I talk about a livery. So, I thought I may as well just mention it now, at the beginning.

01:06

I'm a little surprised at the sheer amount of black that's on all of the cars. The black on most of the liveries isn’t actually paint but exposed carbon fibre. Painting the cars, regardless of the colour, means that you’re adding weight which obviously costs teams a lot of lap time.

01:24

I honestly, honestly thought a lot more of the teams would have found way to reduce the weight in the car. Not just through scrapping paint off and leaving carbon fibre exposed but through some of their upgrades and maybe making the chassis a little bit lightweight. But maybe they have. Maybe some of the teams just wanted to get the weight as low as they could and just add ballasts if they needed to. But yeah, that's my thought on the black. It seems to be a lot more for weight-saving purposes than just because it looks cool.

01:59

And I thought I may as well mention that now because it seems to be what a lot of the teams are doing this year. But now that that's done, let's get into the actual rankings.

02:07

Coming in at number 10 is AlphaTauri. I usually like the AlpaTauri livery. It flows well and just looks well put together and considering that they're mainly a fashion brand, I wouldn't expect anything less from AlphaTauri, let's be honest. I loved the way that they usually incorporate the logo into the livery, especially in the past couple of years.

But this year… I’m really just not a fan which is exactly why they came in last place.

02:41

Orlen came on as a new sponsor for the team after splitting ways with Alfa Romeo last season and that’s meant AlphaTauri putting on a lot more red on the car and I just don’t like it. The red, for me, is really assaulting on the eyes and it stands out so much. Just not in a good way. I think on the Alfa Romeo it didn't stand out as much because the car theme is normally white and red. But with the Alpha Tauri, when your colour are normally white and navy, and those are still the primary colours on the car, there's just these bright shades of red here and there and my eyes immediately get drawn to them instead of the actual car.

03:22

In terms of sponsorship, I mean, that's great. As a sponsor, you want people looking at your brand. So, great for Orlen. But for the actual livery, I'm really not a fan of the red on the car.

03:35

The AlphaTauri logo on the car as well is so much bigger on the sides and I’m also not a fan of the white nose. I much prefer the navy nose last year. The white, I don't know why. I prefer the navy compared to the white. Overall, it just feels like the AlpahTauri livery this year iss a downgrade from last year. I don't think it flows as well. It feels really- almost clunky, like it doesn't flow. You've just whacked on colour here and there. Whacked on a bit of red and it just doesn't look as nice to me.

04:13

The launch though was probably was one of my favourites, just because it was straight to the point. A nice 2-minute video and then the car reveal at the end. Perfect. Wonderful. We weren't wasting time. We got straight to the point. We got to the reason why people were tuning into that live. It was to see the car.

04:35

I don't know if it was just me though, but I thought there was going to be a bit of a bigger launch. When AlphaTauri had announced their season launch date they had said it was gonna be in New York. It was gonna be during New York Fashion Week. And so, I don't know, I think I just expected something a little bit bigger. And because this came after the Red Bull launch in New York, I thought we were gonna get a lot more.

05:00

I think it would have been nice during that launch to here from Yuki and Nyck. Especially because Nyck's a rookie, Yuki now has a new teammate but I know there were interviews that were posted afterwards. So, we didn't lose out on that entirely at least. I'm not going to complain too much though guys because some of the launches went on for way too long. I appreciate that AlphaTauri didn't give us an hour of waffle, they had a really nice video for two minutes and then gave us a shot of both of the drivers with the car.

05:31

I tell you what was a little bit weird though, was all the mannequins behind Nyck and Yuki and the car, with all the clothes on them. Freaked me out a little bit until I realised that they were mannequins and obviously they were there to show the new Alpha Tauri fashion line. But yeah, was a little weirded out by that at first.

05:50

Number 9 was then the Haas. I saw some mixed opinions on this livery. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. I'm definitely veering more towards the latter category here. So, Haas cut ties with Uralkali during pre-season testing last year. That’s given them the chance to take a little bit more control over their livery. MoneyGram is their new title sponsor but I don't think they've been as demanding in terms of what goes on the livery and the colours that they're using as much as Uralkali was. So, they've had a little bit more control.

06:25

It’s a very black-and-white car though, isn't it? With a couple of splashes of red on the front wing and rear wing. So it's not really anything special. There was a point where the Haas was mainly black when Romain and Kevin were driving it before Uralkali had come on and I really loved when the Haas was that colour. I think it was black and gold as well. That was very nice.

06:50

They've mainly gone for black and white and I think the red is mainly for the Haas logo which is traditionally in red. The car kind of reminds me of a liquorice all sort or a mint humbug in the way that it's painted.

07:06

I can't lie though, head on, the car doesn’t actually look too bad. When you look t it straight on from the front wing and the nose, it doesn't look like a bad car. But I really don't like the aerial shot of the car. There’s just such a stark difference between the black and white and it doesn’t seem to stand out as a car to me. There's not anything especially interesting about it.

07:28

It just seems to be a really really basic livery and what doesn’t help is that I don't even know what the branding for Haas is anymore. I don’t know what their brand identity is. It’s changed so much in the past few years that it’s hard to know and pinpoint it.

07:47

Their season launch was the most minimal thing ever. It was the same way they revealed the car last year. They legit just posted the photos online and that was it. No fuss. Nothing wow. Just posting the photos on their social media channels. I feel like that’s mainly down to the fact that there are financial issues with Haas and funding issues. And that's no secret. Haas have been open in saying that, yeah, they don't have the same money that other teams on the grid have. So, I feel like they choose quite a minimal season launch to save that money.

08:25

I do think they could have pushed the boat out a little bit and maybe have a video to go with the livery. Something like how AlphaTauri did their launch. Doesn't have to be anything massive and super flash. Even if you just had a couple of clips going around the car. Maybe have Nico and Kevin around it and Guenther. Just something a little bit more. It's something that definitely wouldn’t have cost as much as a full season launch with an audience and presenters and renting out a space if they didn't have the room in their factory. But it would done is probably create a little more excitement and talk about the car compared to the way they’ve done it now. Overall though, the car is just kinda eh. Nothing too special. It’s there and does the job, covers the car. I'll see it on track.

09:14

We then have the McLaren coming in at number 8. I normally don’t mind the payaya. I don’t think it’s ever been my favourite livery but there’s nothing wrong with it. I like the fact that they have such a bright colour on the car, it makes it so much more noticeable on track. This year though, like most other teams, they have stripped back so much of the paint that it almost looks like there's more exposed carbon fibre on the car than there is papaya. Which is a little disappointing considering they're known as the papaya team. Honestly, I think tha'ts what disappointed me most looking at the car. I don't know whether they were just struggling to find other places to strip back the paint in a more hidden way, or whether they were just struggling with the weight that much but so much black and just not enough orange for me on that car.

10:09

The light blue on the car is something not something I've been a fan of at all. I don’t know, I just need a bit more from the blue. It needs to be a little bit brighter because with the orange I'm just not a fan of it right now in that really light, powdery blue stage.

10:27

In terms of their launch though, I really loved all of the black-and-white video clips they had for their 60th anniversary of the brand. They had some amazing clips of Bruce McLaren and the original McLaren workers doing interviews. And the fact they had two of the original workers at the launch was amazing. Really great clips of how McLaren was built up as brand, how they built up through Formula One, some of their champions, some of their race wins. They were really lovely videos. So I really enjoyed seeing those.

11:00

We also got the chance to hear from Oscar Piastri as a McLaren driver for the first time. And we also got to hear from the new Team Principal. So, for me it was one fo the better launches. Not a load of unnecessary interviews and talks. Mainly got to the point that we wanted and it didn't take a whole load of time for them to actually reveal the car.

11:21

At number 7, we have Red Bull Racing. What can I say, guys? Was it a surprise that they didn’t change the livery? Not at all and I can’t say I’m angry about it either. I know people have made memes about it. I have, myself and I know there are a lot of people who wanted Red Bull to change their livery but there’s a lot of brand recognition there. I know exactly which car is the Red Bull when it’s on track. I know when I close my eyes, in my head, what an RBR car looks like when I picture it. There's no doubt about it in my head and honestly I think if they were to change the livery there would be a little bit of upset and anger towards it. Because it's just the way we know an RBR car look like now and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

12:10

In general though, it's just not my favourite livery. It’s a really deep navy and always so busy with sponsors. So, that’s what I chucked it in at number 7. I don't hate it but I don't love it. It is there and I think there are just better liveries on the grid for me.

: 12:32

The launch on the other hand was one of the worst ones for me. One of my least favourites. It was a fairly long season launch and I don’t understand why we had to wait until towards the end of the launch to see what was essentially the same car. My hats off to Red Bull for putting fireworks around the stage when you were revealing the same car.

12:58

ld be partnering with Ford in: 2026

13:36

On top of that, there was also the mysterious disappearance of Stefano Domenicali. I haven’t seen anyone from the FIA or FOM in a launch this year but apparently, Domencali was meant to be at the RBR launch, only when they announced him on stage… he didn’t turn up. They ended up finishing the launch with us still having absolutely no idea where he was. Apparently he was backstage but I have no idea why he didn't actually end up on stage. And I don't think we ever figured out where he went or why he didn't turn up.

14:13

To be honest, he was probably going to just say a few words on Ford rejoining F1 and how excited F1 were and how much history there was there but that didn’t help the anticlimactic feeling I was getting from this launch.

14:27

As always though, it’s nice to hear from the drivers and we got the chance to hear from Daniel Ricciardo as he rejoins the team. I feel like the audience was just lacking a little bit though. As were the presenters. They didn't seem too excited to be there. None of them were the most enthusiastic and it was just a little bit disappointing.

14:47

There was something they announced that made me pretty excited though and that’s the fact that for the three American races this season, Red Bull are launching a contest for fans to design the liveries they run at each of those races. So, that's for Texas at Circuit of the Americas, Miami and Las Vegas. I cannot wait to see what people come up with and what ends up on the car. If I had any kind of artistic ability I would love to join but I struggle to draw stick people so I might step away from this one. It’s a great idea though and I’ve seen fans do concept liveries for different teams before so I’m sure it won’t disappoint. And it's a great way to get your fans interacting with the sport.

: 15:34

After Red Bull came Alpine for me. The livery has always reminded me of a pink and blue fizzy cola bottle and I absolutely love the taste of those. I adore the pink on the car, it’s not a colour any of the other teams really have and I think the blue and the pink actually works really well together. This would have been further up my list, it normally is. I genuinely love the Alpine livery but once again the amount of exposed carbon fibre meant that it was bumped further down the list.

16:06

I'll be honest with you guys though, if Alpine decided to use the fully pink livery for every race this year, it would have ended up near the top. No doubt about it. Just give me back the pink panthers, I miss them. There was absolutely nothing that could have beaten a fully pink car for me. I loved it and I want it back. So, Alpine, just commit to it. Give me a fully pink car this season. Forget the Alpine blue, I don't care about it. Just give me the pink.

16:37

The launch though... When you look at the entire launch… what a mess. It was meant to start at 8pm, so I was ready. Sat down with my family, waiting for it to begin. And I thought it was starting on time. And that in itself I was shocked at because a couple of the launches on Sky have actually been a little bit late. Not majorly. But I was pleasantly surprised when I thought oh, Alpine are starting. Great, wonderful. And then I realised I was basically getting 15 minutes of adverts for Alpine. Nearly 15 minutes of adverts for their road car. And some of the were shown twice! You know what was ironic? What was really ironic? The fact that one of their ads legit said “On time”. For what? Alpine, you were 15 minutes late for your own launch. What happened? 15 minutes late and then a pretty boring launch.

17:37

The audience seemed so dead and even the presenter seemed awkward when she was trying to get some sort of reaction out them. Some kind of cheer. They were just dead.We also had one of the team members for Alpine giving us a full run-through of the car which, okay look, I have a background in engineering, maybe not mechanical engineering but still engineering, and even I found that part a little dry. I don’t think any other team really had any of their engineers to give that much of a talk on the things that they've changed on the car. Not even vaguely the things that they had changed in that much detail. The teams like to keep as much as they can quite close to their chest. So, for me that was definitely an interesting choice.

18:27

na be their reserve driver in: 2023

19:04

But honestly, it was the worst season launch by far for me and it definitely didn't help that they started late.

: 19:10

We’re now at the halfway point now and that spot goes to Alfa Romeo. When I first saw the car, I honestly thought I was looking at the Ferrari. The shade of red that they’re using is so close to the shade that Ferrari uses or at least a shade that I associate with Ferrari way more than I do Alfa Romeo. A fair bit of black on this car as well but I think it goes with the red. I think they've tried to style it a bit more than other teams have. This one kind of reminds me of a cherry cola bottle.

19:43

I am gutted that we’ve lost some of the white on this car since white and red are usually the colours that I associate with the team but I’m not going to complain. I really like this livery, it’s a really beautiful car. Like I said, I think where they’ve opted to have the carbon fibre has really worked with the red so there's not this stark contrast between the colours.

20:04

I’m almost a little surprised that Alfa Romeo needed to strip so much paint from the car. I don't know and maybe I need to take better look at the car to see if it's paint or exposed carbon fibre but they were one of the lightest at the beginning of last season. So, I wasn't expecting them to need to strip off that much to lose weight. Maybe some of the upgrades from last season and whatever they've done to the car this year has made it gain a little bit more so they're way over the minimum weight limit. So, maybe that's why. I guess we'll wait and see. But I don't think the black was a bad addition to the car. Especially the way they've tried to style it.

20:45

This launch was a little bit long but I'm glad that we got some really interesting questions from the media to the drivers this time around. Not just about the car but also about what they’d been doing over winter break andwe had some really good insight from the team. We got to talk to the new management team and what they're hoping to get out of Alfa Romeo this season. And it was really nice to see Andreas Seidl at the launch in his new role as CEO. We didn’t hear from him much, if at all but he’s not really a man of many words when it comes from the media, so that wasn’t a surprise.

: 21:20

I decided to put the Williams in fourth place. I adored their livery last year and it’s largely unchanged this year. The blue is beautiful and what I love most about it is the geometric shapes in the slightly different shades of blue. It's subtle but just gorgeous when you get that close up of the car. And of course, I have to mention the roll hoop. I love that it’s the Duracell battery, that was some extremely smart sponsorship placement right there. the designer knew exactly what they were doing with that.

21:55

Williams have opted to go for a matte finish on the car this year like a couple of the cars have done. Matte paint does weigh less than gloss so that’s probably the reason behind that, especially if they didn’t want to have a whole load of exposed carbon fibre on the car. They just opted to switch the finish on the paint I personally love a matte finish, I get that it might not have the same kind of shine, especially during a night race but I’m a fan of it.

22:22

The launch itself was nice and succinct, I think it was roughly 20 minutes in length. Not a whole load of fuss which I appreciated and I’m pretty sure it was pre-recorded or at least it looked that way. You know what? If it was pre-recorded, I’m not even going to complain about that because at least we didn’t have the problems we did with the AlphaTauri launch starting late. The one thing that I am gutted about with this launch though was the fact that we didn’t get to hear from James Vowles at all. And considering that he’s only just joined the team at their TP, I thought it was a little strange. I thought we'd get a couple of words from him, maybe about the direction he wants to take the team in or something along those lines. So, a little disappointed in that but I’m sure we’ll be seeing him around a lot when the season starts back up.

: 23:14

And now we’re into the podium places of my livery ranking. And coming in third , we have the Ferrari. Look, I think you guess are gonna guess that I do love a block-coloured car and the Ferrari is a classic. I get that they don’t change their livery and that we can pretty much always expect the red but for me, it would feel like there was something missing from the grid if we didn’t have the red car in the form of Ferrari. It would not feel like Formula One to me without it.

23:48

They did change something this year though and that’s the rear wing. Instead of seeing a sponsor on there, like we see with pretty much every team, we actually have the team name on there in that gorgeous white font. Much like they did in Monza and I love it. That rear wing is just perfect and I’m a huge fan. I feel like a lot of the fans loved it. And they listened to their fans. They listened to the Tifosi. And they opted to keep it on the car for this year. I just think it ties in with the whole car so well and having the name of the team in that font is just so much prettier than having the sponsor on there.

24:27

Ferrari do have a little bit of exposed carbon fibre by the looks of it but they’ve tried to hide it towards the bottom of the car so you can’t see it too much. What you're mainly seeing is red and you have to really look quite closely at the bottom of the car to see that exposed carbon fibre.

24:44

e Charles do two laps in that: 2023

25:56

My hats to Ferrari, especially to do a running of the car for the first time in front of everyone. And on live TV. Because you don't know if anything is going to go wrong. So, congratulation Ferrari. You might not be my favourite livery but you are definitely my favourite season launch.

26:16

Coming in at number two is the Aston Martin. This is once again a largely unchanged livery. I think AM basically said that they might have changed the shade of green a little bit but that’s about it. I love British racing green though, it is such a beautiful colour and I love it on the car. And I do appreciate that they didn't go with a matte finish for this because I don't think it would have suited the car at all. Like I said before, I love a block colour livery. I don’t need a whole load going on with the car. If I like the colour and I can see it through all the sponsor stickers, I’m pretty happy. I don't need a lot, guys So, I’m honestly glad that they haven’t changed much on the car.

27:01

The launch was okay, not the most exciting. We got to see Alonso as he joins the team and I did have a bit of a giggle when he was running out of the tunnel with Lance. Lance is just walking normally and you've got Alonso running along after him. It was like a little hop skip and jump as he made his way to the car. But I hope that just shows how excited he is to join the team and get to racing.

27:25

. My favourite livery for the: 2023

28:03

I don’t know how many of us are surprised that Mercedes decided to go black this year. Merc admin seemed to be dropping a lot of hints across social media that that's what they were going to do. But the one that threw me off a little was the mention of them going back to their history especially since they’d already gone silver last year which was their history. It’s made a lot more sense now since Mercedes haven’t painted the entire car black. There are parts but lot of it is actually just exposed carbon fibre. And this was the exact way that the silver arrows came to be, when they had first started in F1, Mercedes had to lose weight on the car quickly and they decided to scrape the paint off of their cars and the underneath was silver. So they became the Silver Arrows.

28:50

Now though, the body of the car is black carbon fibre, so they have returned to their history in this way. They scrapped off the silver paint and there was black underneath. I do love it though and that accent of Petronas blue is just stunning. They’ve opted to go for neon colours for both of their drivers this year. Lewis is sticking to the yellow and George’s number is now in green. They both definitely stand out on the car and give it a much needed pop of colour. It just looks really sleek and elegant. And I hope it's as quick as it looks like but we're gonna have to wait and see about that.

29:29

The launch itself wasn’t anything special, let's be honest. It was a normal Mercedes launch. We had, Toto, Lewis, George and Mick sat down and answering a couple of questions before the car reveal. Thankfully, the question portion didn’t take too long and we did get to hear about how the team were doing over winter break. After the car reveal, they answered a few more questions and we then had Mike Elliott, who’s the technical director and Hywel Thomas, who’s the managing Director at Mercedes AMG HPP, basically, he looks after all the power unit stuff. They had them come out and just quickly speak about what their hopes are for the car, what they've been doing on the past year and over winter break and what their hopes are for the future and what they've improved on. Wasn't a wow launch but it didn't drag on and I'm thankful for that if nothing else.

: 30:21

And those are all of my rankings for the liveries this year. I’m sure we’re going to see some special edition ones though, or at least I hope we do. Alpine have already that they’re running the full pink livery for the first three races this season. So, we should be seeing that in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia. And as I mentioned, Red Bull will also have some fanmade liveries for the American races which will be super interesting to see.

: 30:50

And like I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, there was so much more black than I was expecting to see on these cars. I know people are starting to think that the cars are all going to look really similar on track because we're just gonna see a lot of black but I do think most of the teams have been pretty strategic when it comes to where they’ve opted to strip the paint back to make sure that most camera angles will actually show the team colours and not expose carbon fibre. So, hopefully, it won't be a struggle to actually tell which team is which car. Or which car is which team.

31:24

What I am hoping though is that when the teams are able to actually cut down the weight on the cars, we’ll see a lot of the colour return and say goodbye to the exposed carbon fibre. Hopefully, teams can start making that progression this season as they start to develop their cars. Honestly, I thought we would be a little more on top of the weight at this point but I guess it’s just a struggle for a lot of the teams right now.

: 31:47

And look, I also know that there were a lot of people who were disappointed that so many of the cars didn’t change liveries but, to be honest, a lot of the teams billed this as a season launch more than a livery reveal. So I wasn't expecting there to be a huge load of change. On top of that, F1 is a huge stage for advertising, both for the teams and their sponsors, so you need a bit of brand recognition there. You don’t get that when you change your livery a lot of the time. So I get why some of the team opted to keep the same or a similar livery to the past couple of years.

: 32:22

As pretty as these cars look though, what’s going to be most important is how fast they go and we’re going to be getting a pretty good idea of that this week. On Thursday we’re going to be kicking off preseason testing in Bahrain. I’ll be keeping up with everything going on there, all the times, any DNFs and how the rookies are handling their first F1 cars. So, keep an eye out on my Twitter and my Instagram @stewards_office. I will hopefully be tweeting and posting on my stories and next week there will be a whole preseason testing episode. So, watch out for that.

33:07

Thank you guys and diolch yn fawr for watching. Make sure to give this podcast a follow on your favourite podcast platform, I really do appreciate every single listen I get. It means a lot. And I’ll see you guys the next time you’re summoned to the Steward’s Office.