Formula 1 has rules about car liveries. A team must have both of its cars presented in “substantially the same livery at each event” and any change to this livery during a season can only be made with the agreement of the Formula 1 Commission. The aim of this rule is to make sure that cars are instantly recognisable to spectators, whether they are at home, or watching from the grandstands. The cars are supposed to carry numbers that are “clearly visible” from the front of the car and, in order to help people distinguish between two team-mates (which is often quite difficult) the first car must have a fluorescent red onboard camera, and the second car a fluorescent yellow one.
The only time when I can remember there being a problem with this was when British American Racing first turned up in 1998 with plans to run its two cars in different liveries, one using BAT’s 555 State Express branding and the other in Lucky Strike colours. This resulted in the truly horrible livery with which the team raced in 1999 (left). The multi-livery idea had been used in IndyCar racing where BAT had supported Team Green with Paul Tracy running with Kool branding and Dario Franchitti with either 555 or Lucky Strike.
Such concepts are regularly used in the United States with teams not only running different sponsors on different cars, but also changing liveries from one race to the next. This allows the teams to sell much cheaper sponsorship deals to allow a company to be primary sponsor for the races in which it wants more coverage, and a subsidiary sponsor at other events. This means that even the most focussed fan struggles to keep up.
As you can see from Kyle Busch’s Joe Gibbs’s Toyota (right) there are going to be multiple liveries throughout the year and, his team-mates Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano will also have different iterations of their sponsorship. This means that NASCAR is a very colourful championship, but it is tough to follow races if you are a casual viewer. In F1 you know what to expect from one race to the next. The difference is that NASCAR uses the numbers in a completely different way, rather than changing them around each year one team or one driver becomes associated with his number and that allows for much better branding opportunities for merchandising, as a driver might, for example, be able to sell five diecast models and five different teeshirts to each of his fans, rather than the one that can be bought in Formula 1.
The same has been happening in IndyCar racing with Penske Racing this year having sponsorship from Shell (for Hélio Castroneves), Izod (for Ryan Briscoe) and Verizon (for Will Power), but with PPG Industries and Guidepoint Systems taking over the primary sponsorship at certain events.
The downside of this philosophy is that the big teams can sweep up much of the mid-range sponsorship as companies can be guaranteed a big splash at two or three races when the cars they sponsor are running at the front, rather than negligible coverage for cars that appear in the midfield at each race. This means that mid-range teams either run out of money and disappear or they have to look to more scrappy sponsorships, although this allows them to bring in companies that cannot afford a full season.
There is much to be said for NASCAR’s use of numbers as brands, and having a much bigger presence on the car, so that every car is instantly recognisable, however the race-by-race sponsorships and multi-livery teams do seem to be rather less professional than the neat and tidy F1s.
As ever Joe, an informative piece….
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, it is important to note that (although NASCAR itself actually owns each) the numbers on the stock cars ‘belong’ to the relevant team, so even those drivers most closely associated with a particular number lose that number when they move to a new team.
The upside of all of this is that for a few of those most iconic numbers, there is an amount of fan migration from ‘driver A’ to ‘driver B’ when the second takes on the iconic number that itself had an iconic past.
As a final thought, those various numbers have gathered such momentum that (bizarrely, for the country that seems to focus more on ‘being winners’ than perhaps any other) No.1 holds no real value. Dominant numbers on-track across the last decade are 24 and 48, and those, along with 20 take a disproportionate amount of sales in terms of merchandise, although each pales into oblivion when compared to the 88/3 of the Earnhardt dynasty.
It is immensely frustrating that the f1 teams don’t have visible numbers. Is okay when the drivers have substantially different helmet colours to both their car and their team mate but otherwise instant identification is difficult. If the teams were forced to have a certain area devoted to the number then no one could complain about the poteneial loss of sponsorship. I see BTCC are moving to using the whole rear window.
The rear wing endplates would seem the obvious place.
Thats all well and good Joe, but with NASCAR they have a big area in which to put a large number without it detracting from the ad space.
If F1 were to allocate a single number for a driver it would need to be big enough to be seen and as a percentage of car space would take up too much for the bean counters to tolerate.
I think having a changing livery would not be a problem for the casual viewer as they would not know any difference and the tv courage and commentary these days is so good that they will be easily kept informed as to what car is what…..for the avid fan it would not matter either because we are all F1 nerds and can spot a Mclaren from a Redbull from a Renault in the dark from 40 paces !
In fact I miss the “special” liveries that were produces from time to time….Keke Rosberg Marlboro “lights” and Martin Brundles Gitanes Ligier spring to mind….
How about a nice metallic gold bling Mclaren for the GP at Olympic time….
Also if Bernie like to keep thing nice and neat, why has he not banned drivers from changing helmets. With on board camera so important now, it is harder for the casual fan to know who is behind the wheel…Vettel must have had 4 or 5 different designs last season alone.
Given the current economic climate do you not think that the teams at the back would benefit from one off race deals?
Look at HRT this season. They have launched with an logo-less (apart from Narain’s Tata sponsorship) car. Despite the fantastic look designed by Cosmic Motors / Daniel Simon if they plan to run this all season its nothing short of embarrassing. “Your AD Here” should not be present in F1.
If they could run different sponsors each race for a smaller fee it could bring them a little more revenue.
I understand that given the financial climate and last years performance by the spanish squad won’t help them get backing.
I can’t help but feel however that a Nascar sponsorship system would benefit them.
Great Article Joe,
Although I wouldn’t place the current Sauber livery into a category of professional or neat and tidy! My 1 year old daughter could do a better job.
p.s. I liked the 1999 BAR livery.
The possibilities for per race sponsorship in F1 are quite good without the need to change the livery substantially. And there had been examples. Jaguar, RBR blockbuster liveries come to mind, as well as smaller deals by Brawn and Sauber lately.
Most current F1 liveries are neutral enough allow a variety of logos almost anywhere on them, so I don’t see any problem with the regulations on this. Actually the possibilities aren’t used to full extent.
I can see your point that the NASCAR cars might not look quite as slick and professional as F1 cars but I would happily trade the haphazard colour schemes for a sport where they have outrageous novel ideas – like overtaking!
I was lucky enough to be at Talladega last April and witnesses 88 changes for the lead at the startline alone and twenty-nine drivers led that race at some point or another. Sure, I needed someone to point out to me which was Montoya’s car after I searched in vain for the Target sponsored paint job but with the numbers writ large on the cars roof it doesn’t take much to find your man.
I think having custom numbers for every team is very nice. I preferred the old days when the Ferraris were 27 & 28, Benettons 19 & 20, Tyrrell 3 & 4 and so on. If you become a champion, you get the #1. The numbers present a lot of opportunities and its stupid to change them every year, also this system is used in some other championships and I know drivers who just hate it.
I think 1995 was the last season it was used, that marked the end of V12s as well:(
I can’t see why you can’t have two different liveries for the whole year, if it’s from the same brand, for a whole year, was mainly the same colour just different logo’s.
For instance, if Monster sponsored a team, they could have the same predominantly black car but one with a green M and one with a yellow M, as per the different flavours. Or even (although it won’t happen now) if Marlboro had one car red/white and the other gold/white or green/white, but otherwise the exact same design.
I guess the main argument against that is if there’s a specific marketing push, it may be financially beneficial for the team to make the Rice Krispies driver let the Corn Flake driver through to win the race…
Thinking about it though, that could work, after all, HRT had different names down the side last year. Admittedly it was driver names but so long as they look the same overall, it should be ok. They do it in GP2….
thewizardweb,
It is about professionalism.
The teams have worked hard to have strong ‘looks’ over the last decade, so it seems odd that the drivers have increasingly gone for messy – and frequently changing – helmet designs. Damon Hill and David Coulthard have had the strongest designs of recent times.
F1 teams really do need to be seen to have a homogeneous corporate image across all their activities – so everything from cars to team personel are immaculately turned out in matching outfits. I guess this is because F1 establishes brands out of the team as a whole rather than from individual car/driver combinations.
I think that’s why numbers on cars are getting less and less clear, because they detract from the singular identity of the team. Even individual touches such as driver helmets are disappearing.
I don’t think it’s about sticker space anymore. I think that kind of direct advertising where bigger stickers equal more cash is becoming less relevant. Perhaps exclusivity would be valued more?
i quite like seeing the big numbers on the car – i never really understood why the powers that be insist on the only differentiation between cars being the t-bar on the top, i want to see a massive car number on the nose and side plates of the rear wing. makes it look more racy
Frankly I think the FIA is underestimating the fans and overestimating the casual watcher.
The fans that watch each race and follow the news closely on the web will easily recognize the cars even if they sport a different look than the last race.
They already seen this being announced and pictures already have popped up. Just like in NASCAR.
Days before they’ll know “Oh this is the weekend that Micheal will run that classic 7up paintjob to celebrate his debut 20 years ago” for example.
At the same time the casual watcher won’t recognize the difference between half of the grid.
Every red car will probably be driven by Schumacher as “he always ran that red car right??”
And they’ll still wonder what happend to “raidkingen”
Just losen up the rules about the paintjobs. It will generate more money and make it more interesting because special one off’s are mostly awesome (remember that Gitanes Ligier?)
It does seem to be Dario Franchitti who suffers most from the one-race livery in IndyCars, as the Target group highlight different brands in their portfolio.
The jokes when he ran in the No. 10 Vaseline Men car were brutal, and then there was the Cottonelle car – “innovative, comfort solutions for perineal personal care” to the sponsor, loo roll to you and me.
I have to admit that a big easily-visible number on the nose, and the old pre-1995 numbering system where the numbers stayed the same unless you won the championship, were more congenial than the current system. As for branding and fan connexion, well, there are a lot of racing fans of a certain age who feel an instant thrill of recognition when they hear “Red 5″, or will think “Ferrari” when they see the number 27.
I find the use of T-Cam colours to be quite the ingenious way to differentiate between drivers of a team, especially as rules changed to require drivers to sit ever deeper in the monocoque, which undermined helmet designs as easy differentiators.
It’s easy to remember what T-Cam colours your favourite driver carries (in addition to the team’s colours), and easily recognizable from distances and angles that even large numbers would be.
I have to agree about so much of what’s been said here. I watch maybe a dozen NASCAR races on tv every year and the sponsorship changes can be a bit confusing for the casual viewer. Having said that, the vast bulk of NASCAR fans know their drivers, teams, and most importantly, the numbers associated with them. This is hammered through every time the announcers comment on them, or fellow drivers do in an interview “I was low and the 88 car was right next to me running the high line…” Everyone knows that the 88 car is Dale Earnhardt Jr. What’s even more remarkable is that most of the NASCAR fans know what each driver’s number is! We’re talking about a field that can be in excess of forty at one race. This is one way that NASCAR teams can change the sponsorship throughout the season and do it successfully. “Hey look! Dale Jr. has a different sponsor on the 88 car!” is a comment I might hear if a NASCAR race is on at a bar I’m at from a fellow patron. To their credit, the announcers are always hitting on who’s a teammate to who. By the end of the first race, you pretty much have that part of it down. Although I’m much more of an INDYCAR fan, thus far INDYCAR throughout the years (IRL and CART) don’t do as successful of a job in identifying the car or team as NASCAR does.
F1 is definitely a much easier system to identify teams, with the same paint schemes. However, having said that, under the circumstances NASCAR has indoctrinated their fans very, very well and for them, it works. It’s remarkable to see, even casual NASCAR fans will tell you all the members of the Hendrick Team (Jimmy Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, and Jeff Gordon) without a hitch, even though the cars carry entirely different liveries. I find that amazing and almost mind boggling.
Silverstone 79: Just for the record, the Marlboro Lights livery never raced, and indeed appeared only very briefly, at one Friday morning practice at Estoril. It was simply a test by Marlboro to see how such a livery would look in real racing conditions, live, in stills and on TV, and they concluded it didn’t work well enough (and/or that it would dilute the impact of the red branding).
When they ran both McLaren and Alfa in virtually identical livery one year I complained to a Marlboro man that it was hard to tell the two teams apart – and he was delighted !
Joe, Nice topic for discussion.
I would like to counter the point you have made about front running team attracting all the sponsorship and midfield/back marker teams not getting enough sponsors in Nascar. Isn’t that the case in F1 as well. While the likes of McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes and now Redbull are getting all the sponsors, likes of Sauber, Williams have lost their sponsors to these big teams in last 4-5 years. And when these teams have tried to compensate by getting drivers with personal sponsorship prude F1 fans (read uninformed F1 fans) have snubbed these drivers and teams for denying Talented Driver(Without inclination to get personal sponsorship) from racing in “Pinnacle” of Motorsport.
I am with @mdewals here – FOM/FIA needs to relax the constraint on change of liveries from race to race a core F1 fan will still know a Petronas Liveried Car at Sepang GP is still Mercedes Car and Abbey National Car at Silverstone will be a McLaren.
.
And casual fans – we the core fans have to educate them anyways about the F1 (or any motorsport) and our need to follow cars going around same circuit 50-60 times
If memory serves me right, BAR used to have China specific livery to promote local brand of Lucky Strike/555 didn’t they?
Canehan: Keke Rosberg ran the yellow livery for the full weekend at Portugal 86
Canehan,
Sorry to correct you but it did in fact race.
But as you rightly say it didn’t stand out well.
Back then it was a mustard yellow, were they considering it again today I’m sure they could come up with an excellent metallic effect.
Joe, I’m not sure what the issue is here. Is it a uniform livery or a chance for a sponsor to come on board for a special event or reason. The front of any grid will always attract the most sponsor dollars. The farther down the grid, the harder the return on the investment sponsorship. Just look at the back of the F1 grid; they do not get great coverage, in fact they get terrible coverage! Look at them, some many seconds off the pace! Who would want to be associated with them? Do the cars have to be uniform for each race?
Since F1 is truly international, it would make much more marketing sense to tailor the livery to a sponsor or brand for that particular event. This brings out the local area dollars. Forcing a “fixed” livery takes away the creative end of marketing. I suppose since it has always been that way it should stay that way. F1 is also not directed directly at consumers like NASCAR with sponsor participation. Although I don’t know how Mark Martin could drive a Viagra sponsored livery. It made for wonderful jokes.
At least in NASCAR sometimes things work out for the liitle guy. Look at Joe Nemechek- running faster at Daytona in his unsponsored privateer Toyota than the factory team of JGR! This surely will pay off with at least a sponsor for the Daytona 500 if not a bit longer and that sponsor is guaranteed to get several mentions during the event. I can hear the announcer now, “there’s front row Joe, who came here without sponsorship, ran faster than the factory Toyotas in qualifying and picked up sponsor brand x for the race. He’s doing a good job for brand x”.
I follow my favorite team or driver in any series and the livery is secondary to me. In F1, the livery comes down to the historic fact that most entries ran under their national colors and it tied to some sort of tradition.
Racerx
There is no issue. It was just a reflection.
I don’t see why one team can’t run two different liveries like BAR wanted to before being forced into the zip-up car you pictured. Surely this would allow some of the smaller teams to put together a funding package? I’ll happily admit to not knowing the full business implications of what that would do (ie corporate identity, big teams harvesting all the sponsors etc), but as a fan it wouldn’t bother me. That might be because I’ve followed IndyCar for the last 15 years so I’ve knd of got used to it! I would like to see the car numbers all be a standard size and colour as it’s so hard when at track to pick out which car is which. Also if the numbers are more prominant you can then change the liveries without the fans loosing track of who is who. This is also more beneficial when the drivers keep numbers a la NASCAR and MotoGP. When watching NASCAR (which I can’t now thanks to them being on subscription channel
), I look for 18 and 42, not M&Ms and Target
Finally, a pet peeve of mine re F1 has ben aired! Now, I can vent:
Bring back the big, bold numbers within a circle of contrasting color!
Rant over. Thank you.
I never understood why BAR didn’t alternate liveries between their two brands from race-to-race, thus fulfilling the “substantially the same at each race” mandate. It might have been a bit more work, but over the season would have had the same effect as one car each brand.
Martin C Bell,
They can change sponsors at each race already, they just can’t change the livery. That’s where McLaren’s “sponsor window” concept pays dividends, as merely changing the logo in the window isn’t going to substantially change the livery. I think Williams were one of the first teams in recent times to work sponsor logos into the Williams livery, rather than the other way round. Just a few years ago they changed from HP to Compaq on the sidepods in mid-season and barely anyone noticed.
Does the F1 prevent teams from switching sponsors race-by-race, or just liveries? Renault had multiple sponsors on their sidepod last season, but they never altered the livery. I think it does hurt the smaller teams, because local sponsors would be more apt to come aboard for a weekend if the livery could be in their (or their country’s colours). But F1 is a constructors sport, not a drivers sport like NASCAR, and the universal livery is indicative of this
I do think it makes much marketing sense to return to consistent numbers like the 80′s. Ferrari could market 27 and 28 merchandise the same way Hendricks markets 24 and 88 merchandise. To this day I still think of Nigel Mansell as the red 5, much like I think of Earnhardt in the 3 or Petty in the 43. But now Jenson Button is my favorite driver, and I don’t even remember the number on his title winning Brawn (23?).
‘john c’
‘Just a few years ago they changed from HP to Compaq on the sidepods in mid-season and barely anyone noticed.’
I bet Compaq were delighted …
@Ian:
HP bought Compaq, so compaq didn’t really care.