Formula 1 is looking to add a splash of color back to the grid in 2025, with discussions underway to encourage teams to adopt more distinctive liveries.
Feedback from television broadcasts, particularly night races, has raised concerns about the lack of visual distinction between certain cars, according to a report from Motorsport.com.
At high speeds and specific angles, some cars appear nearly identical, making it difficult for fans to follow the action. The Aston Martin and Mercedes liveries, along with Williams and Visa Cash App RB have been cited as specific examples.
The growing similarity is partly attributed to teams' weight-saving strategies. A shift towards unpainted carbon fiber components has resulted in a greater presence of black across the grid, further reducing visual variance.
The FIA and FOM (Formula One Management) are now committed to addressing this issue. They recognize the importance of a visually engaging grid for fan enjoyment and want to ensure clear differentiation between cars.
However, they are also cautious about imposing overly restrictive regulations that could stifle team creativity in car design.
Instead, the chosen approach seems to be open communication and collaboration between Formula 1 and the sport’s teams, and discussions have commenced with the latter to explore solutions that will enhance visual variety on the grid in 2025, according to the FIA’s head of single seater matters Nikolas Tombazis
“As always in F1, it is a bit more complicated than maybe meets the eye,” Tombazis told Motorsport.com.
“One issue is that cars have a bit too much naked carbon, because obviously the weight of paint, so the cars have a bit too much black.
“There has also been a lot of work done by all teams to change the type of paint or indeed a lot of it nowadays is extremely thin films, to keep the weight as low as possible.
“And another issue is that some teams seem to use similar colour schemes, so they end up with cars that maybe look visually quite close to each other.
“We're discussing it still with the teams, and it will be discussed in the next Formula 1 Commission.”
An F1 car’s livery is often a highly guarded secret during its creation and design period.
Tombazis says the FIA is still in the process of figuring out how teams can collaborate and communicate with each to ensure a sensible amount of variance between their conceptions.
“We need to get to some process where teams in some way or other communicate with each other and say: ‘Well, if your car is blue here, mine will not be blue there.’ Or something like that.
“But how exactly that process would work [remains to be seen]. It's not a regulatory process.
“We don't want to be making regulations about liveries as the FIA, but we do want cars to be distinguishable.”
The push for more visually distinct cars isn't the only concern on the FIA’s table. Tombazis says the governing body also wants to improve driver recognizability within teams.
The iconic and flamboyant helmet designs of the past are less common, while the halo device further obscures the helmet, making it even harder to identify drivers from a distance.
“It used to be, of course, drivers had more recognisable helmets in the olden days because there were simpler designs. And they were like that probably for the whole career,” Tombazis explained.
“Now there is a change of regulations [that allow helmet design swaps] and they've got all these funny shades, plus you don't see the helmet anyway because of the halo.
“We need to find some way to make people be able to know if it is Russell or Hamilton, but also to be able to easily distinguish the cars.”
©Mercedes
As with F1’s car livery plans, the FIA has no intention of writing up a specific regulation forcing teams to apply distinctive signs to their cars to distinguish drivers.
“It's not something we want to put in a regulation and then report somebody to the stewards because the colour we don’t like,” said Tombazis.
“We don't want to get into that. But we do want to get in a place where somehow teams see it as the common good that the cars can be recognisable.”
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