Lewis Hamilton in the Mclaren Mercedes (Getty)

BMW
A clean but plain livery. BMW’s ‘house colors ‘are white and blue. You see the white used effectively in World Touring Car Championship and the American Le Mans Series with excellent use of fonts. Unfortunately, this style of livery is not used on the Formula 1 car as the company has to rely on sponsorship from Petronas, Intel and T-Mobile.

Petronas house colors are teal, so it is impressive that BMW have been able to convince their main sponsor to drop their corporate coloration. The secondary sponsors are in the blue. The same level of professionalism as McLaren.

A red flash is added to the edge of the blue on the sidepod. I’m not sure of the relevance of this other than a connection with the ‘M’ Power branding which BMW uses on their road cars.

The nose features a small graphic based on the BMW road car ‘kidney’ grille. This has been used since 2001, when BMW entered the sport with Williams. Nice piece of identity.

Renault
It is very hard to say anything positive with this livery, but it does show the problems a team can have when dealing with different sponsor color palettes.

Main sponsor, ING have white, bright orange and blue as their ‘house’ colors. Meanwhile, Renault have yellow. The yellow band which wraps around the nose, along the chassis before tapering into a stripe over the engine cover dates back to 2002 when Mild Seven were the title sponsor.

The orange and yellow are similar hues and fight each other. Stripes along the engine cover results in a very busy vibrant livery, but hardly attractive. The graphics on the engine color are so bold; it takes your eye away from the delicate ING logo.

The car is also covered with lots of small sponsor logos, mostly in black. Red has also been introduced to the front and rear wing endplates. The whole effect is more of a confusing advertising hoarding than a 200mph race car. This is the dilemma, many designers have when different companies’ colors do not work together. I’ve had a similar experience recently where a touring car is blue and white, but at the last moment the sponsor want to use their house color maroon.

Personally, I would have blended the orange and yellow together with a gradient blend. Although ING sits on white background on the race car, my local ING uses orange as its base car. This would result in an equally vibrant unique livery, but one that would not look quite so busy.

ING leave the sport at the end of the year, so it will be interesting to see the look of the 2010 car. I would love the team to go back to the yellow and black design of Renault Sport from the 1980s.

Toyota.
The Toyota F1 livery has remained unchanged since the Japanese manufacture entered the sport in 2002. The brush stroke approach was first used by Toyota during their Le Mans campaign, prior to F1. Unusually, the design is asymmetric. Toyota advise ‘this bold splash of red emphasises a fighting spirit and a one-team mentality while the edgy, uneven fine detail of the brushstroke is inspired by Japanese brush pen drawings’.

The round headrest pad in red mimics the Japanese flag. Panasonic are in their corporate color of blue, which, in theory, shouldn’t work, but they get away with it as it is not too close to the red. Secondary sponsorship in Red and White finishes off the design.

The livery feels a little dated in 2009 not helped as it has been used for seven years with little change.

Andy Blackmore is a experienced vehicle designer and motorsport livery designer and has a BA (Hons) degree in Transport Design from Coventry University in the UK. Andy worked for Yamaha and McLaren before moving to North America. During his time at McLaren he redesigned the majority of the pit equipment including the 'Darth Vader' style pit crew helmets and designed 14 liveries for the McLaren F1 GTR. Andy has also worked on design projects for BAR Honda, Yamaha, Audi Sport UK, Panoz, Creation, Radio Le Mans.com and Electronic Arts. Andy also produces ALMS and Formula One Spotter Guides, which are supported by SPEEDtv.com and Radio Le Mans.com

You can view Andy's online portfolio at www.andyblackmoredesign.com

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