McLaren's Brown suggests freedom to run one-off liveries in F1

McLaren Zak Brown believes F1 should consider relaxing the rules that restrict a team from running different liveries on its cars and allowing one-off paint schemes.

Back in 1999, the BAR outfit attempted to separately run a different cigarette brand on each of its two cars, a move that was quickly outlawed by F1, forcing the team to get creative by running the same double-livery on each machine, split down the middle, with a different brand on each side.

Brown suggests F1 follow a commercial practice which is widespread in IndyCar and NASCAR where one-off schemes are common place and help a team's marketing efforts.

"I think what you could see and what I would be supportive of, and it's not currently allowed, is – and IndyCar does this, as does NASCAR – is changing paint schemes throughout the year," said Brown, speaking at the Motorsport Leaders Forum in London.

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"I still think I'd like to see it as two cars, but if you were going to Monaco and you have a big programme going with one your partners, and for that weekend you wanted to turn it in to a Dell Technologies car or whatever the case may be, but both would be the same [you could do that].

"So the fans still knew that's McLaren, that's Ferrari, whoever the team may be.

"I think that might be a new innovation with partnerships in Formula 1 that's not quite to the extreme of seeing different cars in totally different liveries, because I think those fans are more focused on the driver."

Brown however wouldn't want to see a colorful pack of 20 cars, all racing with different liveries.

"I think if you had 20 different liveries out there it might start to get confusing as to who is who, whereas in NASCAR the fans tend to be more driver-centric, so they'll recognise Jimmie Johnson in the Lowes car, whereas they recognise Fernando Alonso in a McLaren.

"So I think the sport is different."

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