Carbon fibre is a bland material, and unfortunately, it seems to take up the majority of this year’s F1 car liveries.
There has been a major uproar in the past two weeks surrounding the chosen liveries for half the teams in the paddock. Why? Teams seem to have forgotten to apply some paint to their cars, which left fans disappointed looking at bare carbon fibre bodies. The other teams seem to lack any creative design, as Ferrari and Red Bull have stuck with what’s familiar, with the classic scarlet red and dark blue, respectively.
However, I much prefer the repetition of colours to the dullness of a largely carbon fibre-based livery. The worst sinners are by far Alpine and the newly coined Stake F1 team, as they have what appears to be more carbon fibre than paint. For example, Stake has sported a neon green secondary colour to try and distract fans from the lack of paint on the rest of the car, which, despite being a brave artistic choice, does little to distract from the lack of ambition in this year’s design.
Alpine teased fans with promotion material that appeared to show a pink and blue camo, with many fans hoping that this would be the main theme for this year’s livery. Unfortunately, when it came to their car reveal day, they turned out to be the worst offenders, as they forgot to apply a proper paint job. While they did have pink and blue paint on the livery, the colours were very much secondary, almost a highlight, leaving the vast majority of their cars as uncovered carbon fibre.
Gone are the days for brave and shocking cars, such as the iconic chrome cars by McLaren, who have instead opted to continue with their papaya orange and a significant amount of exposed carbon fibre.
The biggest reason for teams choosing to forgo a full paint job is, of course, saving weight. Especially with Red Bull having such a dominant season last year, teams are looking to gain any speed where they can, and so any saved weight is a positive and a possible pole position.
However, with the unappealing liveries revealed this year, many fans have called for the FIA to issue a rule change regarding the amount of exposed carbon fibre allowed on a team car in order to improve the spectacle of the cars as they race the 24 tracks this year.
“Alpine F1 2022 car in BWT livery” by 35mmMan is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.