FIA to Enforce New Car Livery Standards for 2025 Season
May 31 - F1's governing body is preparing to intervene in order to improve the quality of the teams' car liveries from 2025.
As the size and weight of the cars swelled in recent years to accommodate ever-more-expensive hybrid technologies, teams gradually began removing paint - which can add up to several kilograms per car.
Increasingly, many of the F1 cars of 2024 now have a naked black carbon base and are covered sparingly for colour and sponsors.
According to the Spanish newspaper Diario Sport, this has become a "problem" from the FIA's perspective - and it's a position reportedly also backed by Liberty Media-owned Formula One Management.
"One problem is that the cars have too much bare carbon, due to the weight of the paint, so the cars have too much black," said Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's single seater boss.
"A lot of work has also been done by all the teams to change the type of paint. In fact, a lot of it today is extremely thin film, to keep the weight as low as possible," he added.
"The result is that some teams seem to use similar colour schemes, so they end up with cars that look very similar to each other," said Tombazis.
"We are still discussing it with the teams, and it will be discussed at the next F1 Commission."
However, he said an easier solution would simply be for the teams to informally communicate with each other and say "Well, if your car is blue here, mine won't be blue there".
"We don't want to be making regulations on liveries, but we do want the cars to be distinguishable," Tombazis added.
The problem has also been worsened by the drivers, he explains.
"In the past, drivers had more recognisable helmets because there were simpler designs," said Tombazis. "And now with the change in regulations, which allows helmet design changes, they all have these fun designs.
"Plus, the spectators don't see the helmet anyway because of the halo. We need to find some way to make it so people can tell if it's (George) Russell or (Lewis) Hamilton."
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Been waiting for this to happen...it's only common sense and better for the fans at the track and on tv!
I loved the red marks at the front of Williams' 1996, also the yellow squares at Alesi's wings, making a difference in very good points to see in the transmission.
But TBH, the HALO should have the same colours/design as the helmet. Simple. Also, the numbers should have the colours chosen by the drivers.
I don't struggle to tell any teams apart from each other at high speed on certain angles, nor do I struggle to tell Russell & Hamilton based on their helmet designs & the same with other pairings for the most part.
Furthermore, Halo doesn't exactly make seeing the helmets difficult.
But not everyone's such an expert or a genius same as you!
Some spectators are new to this sport and not familiar with idiosyncracies of teams and drivers.
It's easy to distinguish cars by the color of the camera housing on top of the car. Hamilton is yellow, George is black. All the teams have one of each.
AS per camers on top and helmet I can tell also, no issues. But I'd like to see at least the outside of the Halo in a different colour, similar to the helmet, as well the numbers, as it was in 2017.
2017 Mercedes*
Paint jobs and helmet designs are the least of F1 problems. It is the size and weight of the cars. It was so noticeable in Monaco, the beautiful, historic track. These new hybrids are too big race at this street circuit. Tradition and history is one thing, but this boring and dull race won’t increase viewership. Money is always a factor but…
Hybrid isn't the contributor anymore, though, & the overall weight & size will both get reduced for 2026, albeit nothing can realistically make overtaking any easier in Monaco.
The cars are too powerful for the circuit. Monaco is best suited to a time trial no a gp. With such huge unusable power the cars track performance is almost identical.
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