In terms of livery I find it hard to believe that McLaren continues in the Mercedes colours, despite evidently being dropped by the Germans.

I think McLaren should leave the Mercedes image for good and revert to their classic red-white livery, which is easily done, since Vodafone is red and the rest of the car is silver/grey. Red and white are the colours of England as well, and with McLaren these days being the greatest English-entered team by miles, that would be wonderful?

So come on Martin, the future is bright, not grey

Do you agree with me?

I agree to the change of livery, but it should be to this:

http://www.digi-help.com/auto/images/mclaren-mp4-21-a.jpg

Gorgeous.

I tend to dislike orange, and even though it looks Bruce McLaren, it doesn't look particularly English

It's not a sudden split though, it's a phase out. With the option to carry on.

I think McLaren will start making their own engines when the rules change in 2012/2013. Theres no point developing a new 2.4l V8 from scratch unless they buy the IP of BMW or Toyota's engine and develop it from there.

Mclaren-Ferrari MP-27 for 2012.

The "classic red-white livery" is a Marlboro one, and it has been run (or still is, in some cases) by dozens of different racing teams over the world.

I like the present colours and I'm not too disheartened if McLaren continues using them for a couple more years. After that, probably time for a new livery (now likely without Mercedes) but I'm not fond of the orange, even though this is more or less the traditional McLaren colour. Maybe a black/red car instead.

No I would not.

The livery is not going to change, at least not for this year, Vodafone and Santander are quite happy with it.

And I never could understand what people saw in that light orange testing car, I was never a fan of it...

Mclaren fans dont know their team history. Mclaren colours a red-white. poor Bruce

n/m

As the livery doesnt add to the performance of the car, it's the last thing I can be bothered to worry about.

I am bothered about it, after all I will look at it quite a bit. The Mp4/12 and onwards had an amazing paintjob, and I for one really appreciated the care taking into this.

Performance wasn't half-bad either, before you say that they should spend the time on making it faster instead of making it look nice.

Nuvol; most Mclaren fans are well aware of the colours of the team. Just take a look in the McLaren (general) thread, lots of pictures of Macs in all kinds of colours, including some of the "traditional" orange ones. We are even aware the first Mclaren wasn't orange in its first racing appearances, for that matter.

The only way a Orange Mclaren would ever race again was if it was sponsored by the Orange Phone company. In todays logo/brand driven f1 the only colour I can think you could place on the car would be black logos.

I was shocked when McLaren was not red and white any more. Now thinking of going back to that would be great from a nostalgic point of view, but I feel it would be silly - I don't really need them go back to that livery.

It would be like when people say they want F1 cars to be more like those in the 1960's. I have seen such comments, indeed. In my opinion that would be silly. If you want to watch old cars then watch old cars. It would be cool to see the drivers compete in one race in old cars but that would have to be a fun event outside the Championship.

The only thing I wish BE/FIA would insist on is that the liveries of each team are dis-similar. Too often the cars look almost the same, especially from a distance. Other than that, Mac not changing theirs won't hurt my eyes at all.

On the contrary, I'd rather McLaren keep evolving their look for the sake of freshness.

Also, our original colour was orange

No I don't, and if you want that, than you also better mount some other engine on your chassis. Silver, BTW, is also my choice of color on almost all cars I have ever own.

It is well known that the current Mclaren livery paint job is revolutionary, it adds an additional 3.5 points of downforce to the car...so they cant just change it

Grey/Silver whatever you want to call it, and darker more 'sinister' colours are McLaren's corporate image. I just dont see them changing the colour of their car to a lighter colour without redoing everything at the McLaren technology center. If anyone has watched the certain video, Ron Dennis says that every single screw head is identicle in the tech centre, and do you think he will have a white/red purple/green whatever colour race team and keep the same colour at the tech centre? i dont think so. If anything i think and am hoping they may revert to a black car.

Id love the tobacco ban to be lifted so we could reignite with west

During the late 1990's teams started developing corporate colours in an effort to establish their brand. This was the dawn of the closed grid and the value of teams was skyrocketing (even Arrows were valued at over $150m ).

McLaren opted for grey (and black) just like Ferrari is red (and white) and Prost was blue. Jordan tried to corner yellow. Some teams successfully managed to get their sponsors to tow the corporate line although in most cases a major corporation simply bought the livery and then resold it in some way or other. Mercedes paid for the silver livery and then got others to adjust their sponsor colours accordingly (like mobil 1 and West) by offering a discount. BMW did the same at Williams and got compaq and Fedex to change their colours.

Yet for the smaller teams, this was always been a bit of a pipe dream. Jordan might have been yellow but if the right sponsor came along, he'd change his colours pretty damn quick...

And to some extent, that goes for the other teams as well. Ferrari may well be able to insist on red although that has been watered down over the years. I remember Enzo saying he didn't smoke (Marlboro) or drink (Martini) but over the years, Marlboro has appeared on his cars and red ain't so traditionally red anymore...For the right price, we might see blue and yellow Ferrari's....

And that goes for McLaren too. If faced with the choice of money and surviving or maintaining a brand image and going bankrupt (or not getting enough money to remain competitive and eventually becoming a Tyrrell), every team IMO will opt for the money.

It'll never happen, not so long as Vodafone is involved; red clashes horribly with orange.

We already have seen them. Ecurie Francorchamps entered a yellow Ferrari "Sharknose" for Olivier Gendebien at the Belgian GP in 1961. The North American Racing Team Ferraris were blue and white in 1964.

I'm happy with Mclaren remaining Silver. If they have it for long enough, the colour will be associated with the team anyway. I don't remember a huge fuss when Benetton went blue, and people accusing them of trying to emulate Ligier. Mercedes don't own the colour silver and its a free market IMO.

Why were you shocked? They ended their partnership with Marlboro and got a new sponsor west. Whats to be shocked about?

He probably expected them to be red and white (West's colours) .

I don't understand why this subject cannot be discussed in one of the many other McLaren threads.

Here's one for the winter and the new car and here's one for general McLaren discussion. There's plenty of livery discussion in both.