What does a special livery deliver for F1 teams?

Whether a nod to history and heritage, a sample of the weather seasons or simply a social media April Fool’s Day post, the topic of liveries ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix has been loquacious.

Yuki Tsunoda’s promotion to the parent Red Bull team in place of Liam Lawson has dominated the headlines, but so has the fact the local favourite will make his debut in a special white car.

A tribute to Honda in its final year working with Red Bull, the paint job reflects the 60th anniversary of the Japanese car manufacturer’s first grand prix victory and with Tsunoda aboard the RB21, it will only add to the clamour for homemade success this weekend in Suzuka.

A white livery will adorn the Red Bull, inspired by the Honda RA272 which Richie Ginther drove to Honda’s maiden Formula 1 win at the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix. But what is the rationale behind changing a livery across both cars for a race weekend before reverting back to type?

“Well, I think there are multiple reasons why teams would do it,” Oliver Hughes, Red Bull’s chief marketing officer, told Autosport. 

“In the case of what we’re doing this weekend in Japan, that’s really part of our goodbye to Honda. We did it years ago in 2021, which ended up being during the Turkish Grand Prix, because the Japanese Grand Prix was cancelled because of COVID and that was our original farewell to Honda when they were [initially] leaving.

“There was some discussion about it being in Abu Dhabi, but actually they preferred it to be the Japanese Grand Prix. So that was the rationale behind this one. It is sort of a pre-agreed thank you to Honda.

“But I’d say in general, I think we’re probably one of the only teams that sort of did this on a frequent basis, or at least have done during our entire time in F1.

“Predominantly last year we did this as a way of engaging with fans. So we allowed fans to design liveries. But we’ve also done commercial collaborations, like we did a Star Wars livery, we’ve done a Superman livery back in the day.

“For us it’s about eyeballs on the car. But I would think that other teams are probably selling it commercially, because every team I believe is limited to the number of livery changes a year subject to approval from the FIA and FOM.

“So they’ve got that as a commercial right. So they’re probably selling it to commercial partners to say: ‘have your logo on our car, but at one race a year, you can probably do something a bit more than a logo on a car and you can pay a bit extra for it’.

“I’m sure there are some teams that have sold deals for the next three or four years that have special liveries in them or special helmets or something. They’ll be baked in ages ago. Definitely.”

Red Bull Racing RB21, Japanese GP livery

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

While Red Bull’s livery in Japan is team-specific, Haas decided to depict the cherry blossom season which started last week and will run until after F1 has rolled on to Bahrain and beyond in another redesign with no commercial benefit.

Sauber, meanwhile, utilised April Fool’s Day to post a Stake/steak inspired joke livery on social media – some got it and some did not but either way you cut it, the images still got people talking.

In 2024, Alpine unveiled its new challenger with two different liveries – a primary one used for 16 races with the traditional blue and black colours, and a change to pink for the other eight grands prix due to title sponsor BWT.

With more partners in F1 than ever before, are they all happy to see a car, helmet and race suit swapped out, regardless of the reasoning? Red Bull had 42 such partners at the beginning of 2024 and, as Hughes explains, it can take a bit of plate-spinning to keep them all happy.

“It’s always a bit of a debate we have with Red Bull, because our livery has been pretty stable now for 20 years,” he said.

“Actually, it’s pretty iconic, the sun and the bulls. So for us to actually change the engine cover and remove the yellow sun is actually a pretty big departure from what we usually do.

Haas Japanese GP special livery

Photo by: Haas F1 Team

“It’s certainly a discussion we have to have with all of our other commercial partners. So, for instance, if you’re a Tag Heuer, you like your green and red logos, and we’re saying this race, no, sorry, you’re going to have to be mono-black, then that is almost a negative for them rather than a positive.

“But thankfully, we’ve got some good partners, and we took them on a journey, and they bought into the story and everything else.

“It’s not always easy. When a brand partners with us, they generally know what they’re getting, they’re getting a blue livery, they’re getting a white logo or a colour logo and then when you suddenly bring a complete change of base colour, then actually it can have huge implications for some partners.”

Potentially rocking the boat with partners is not the only consideration a squad has to take before opting for a temporary new look – the engineers also have to be won over.

“I’ll tell you what the drawback is every time we want to do this, it’s a fight between marketing and engineering,” added Hughes.

“Because if you ask an engineer about a livery, a livery is an inconvenience, a livery is just weight. It just makes the car slower. If it’s up to the engineers in the paddock, every car will be bare carbon.

“It’s why you’ll see where a lot of cars are, a lot of it is carbon. So I would say every time I suggest a new livery to Pierre Wache (Red Bull technical director) his eyes will roll.

“Then his eyes will roll even more when you tell him you’re doing it in the first race of a triple-header, I can tell you!

“So this didn’t earn us any brownie points with the technical team, that’s for sure. But I’d say that the main limitation is actually just the pressure it puts on the team to actually get the car re-liveried and making sure the parts are liveried up.

“Then now we have to make sure at the end of the race, we are going to have to go back to the other, the main livery before we get to Bahrain, which creates its own challenges.”