F1 75 Live: Ranking the liveries and the winner is... Racing Bulls!

Ticker tape, strobe lights, overly enthusiastic DJs, F1 75 LIVE F1 season launch had it all. There was even time for a Ricky Gervais-style roasting session that set the jovial tone for the evening.

Things got a little weird at times. The event seemed to randomly cross from comedy to music festival and into highly corporate. However, there was more than enough F1 content to get our mouths watering over the season to come (and a fair amount of meme potential thanks to comedy host Jack Whitehall).

At one point, Whitehall even joked that they’d booked the glittering O2 Arena only for ‘not many of the liveries to have changed.’ He was more on the money with some than others! Of course, we haven’t seen the actual cars yet. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But here’s what we think of the liveries so far (going from the worst to the very best).

Williams is at the bottom of our countdown due to a lack of imagination. It’s just too similar to last year’s car. Like many of the liveries, Williams’ looked better from the front. But we’ll be watching it all season from afar, so it doesn’t win any bonus points from us for that.

Yes, it still has the cool Duracell logo that everyone seems to like so much. The way the drivers’ names aren’t just plastered on the side (they’re in nice little bubbles) is a redeeming feature. Their white race suits are also mint! Overall though, the livery’s just too forgettable.

Compared to Williams, Haas has made more improvements. Inverting the side pod colors to black on white was a nice touch. These colors also have a hint of early-2000s McLaren to them that just makes it seem right. A small motif has also been added to signal Toyota’s involvement in the project, but the changes end there.

For this reason, Haas is relatively low in our rankings. With this color scheme, they could’ve done so much more, but they played it safe like Williams. Hopefully (for the sake of the fans they’ve got left since Guenther Steiner departed) their car is more ambitious than their livery.

This could be viewed as controversial—especially seeing as Red Bull has a tried and tested formula here—but they lose major points for a lack of innovation. How many times do we have to watch the same car go around? As we’ll cover later on, even their sister team Racing Bullshas been allowed to push the boat out this year, but Red Bull copied and pasted.

In terms of plus points, at least the team paid tribute to genuine car culture during the launch. And it has to be said that the bright yellow and red color scheme on a dark background does just… work. It’s difficult to justify their lack of creativity though.

Sauber was a bit of a surprise to the GP247 team. Last year’s livery didn’t quite work, and it certainly didn’t look good last season at the back of the grid. This time, however, they’ve gone a little bit wild with the luminous green paint—at the front at least.

This gives the car a much bolder look. Okay, the rear of the car is still a little too dark (we assume this is due to the exposed carbon fiber weight-saving we’ve seen recently). But credit to Sauber; they’re a contender for most improved livery of the year. Hopefully they’ve put the same amount of effort into pit stop practice in the off-season!

Last on stage, McLaren arguably had the biggest buildup. And the team’s livery didn’t really land with a bang. It’s a nice color scheme; don’t get us wrong. The way the papaya and black blend together is certainly unique and interesting to look at. But McLaren’s recent test livery shows what you can do with those colors if you experiment a bit more.

There are also too many sponsors on the car (still). It’s quite distracting, and the little blue highlights added to the mirrors just seem like they’ve been included for endorsements. Yes, that’s part of the modern world of F1. It just feels like there’s too much going on.

Given that Ferrari’s 2022 car was almost universally acclaimed as the best-looking on the grid, this could be another shock to the system. But Ferrari has slipped down our pecking order to fifth. Before you sharpen your pitchforks, hear us out! We think there’s too much HP on the car (similarly to their merch).

The yellow that made last year’s car has also been replaced with a lot of white, and it doesn’t work quite so well. On a more positive note, the white front and rear wings remind us of the 2010 car (which was definitely a looker). The white motif also looks good on the race suits… and it’s a Ferrari, so they always look kind of impressive. This one could’ve been so much better, though. Nevertheless, it did induce one of the biggest roars from the crowd on the night at F1 75 LIVE!

Arguably, Mercedes is in the running for best of the unimaginative bunch. This year’s car looks very familiar to the last. It has a mixture of silver, black, and turquoise, as well as the flourishes it had before. Of course, we’re talking about those big, beautiful stars on the engine cover!

The rest just works, and we’ve not taken so many points away for copy and paste because they don’t really have a choice. Silver is their brand color, they have exposed carbon fiber for weight-saving, and turquoise is there for Petronas. Now Lewis Hamilton has left, there’s also no real reason for them to have an all-black livery. So we view it as a good all-around effort.

In recent years, Alpine has made a name for itself as an indecisive team. One minute they want pink cars, the next they want them to be blue. It seems like they want to give BWT the limelight without completely ditching the classic Alpine racing colors.

This year’s car makes a really good effort of striking that balance. The pink front end works nicely and reminds us of the ‘Pink Mercedes’ of a few years ago. The blue side pod with pink text also catches the eye, and the return of the eni racing logo is a really cool throwback. Overall, it’s a great livery. We just didn’t rate it higher in case they ruin it with another one later in the season!

No matter what they seem to do with these colors, they just work. Aston Martin racing green has a long, storied history in the world of motorsport. And it always just looks good with a touch of light green to accentuate a car’s features. This is done perfectly on this year’s car.

Yes… it’s very similar to last year. For that, we’ve deducted points from other liveries on our list. But Aston Martin needs to be an exception because it was almost perfect anyway. They added a small amount of black to the side pods and a white sponsor area near the T-plate. But it’s nowhere near as bad as the additions Ferrari has made. So it still ranks very highly indeed.

Surprise of the F1 75 LIVE night, first place in our rankings goes to Racing Bulls. By far the biggest improvement over last year’s livery, the new Racing Bulls takes huge inspiration from the Red Bull special edition Honda livery that debuted at the 2021 Japanese Grand Prix.

There are loads of other nice touches as well. The little bulls, or ‘calves,’ running down the side of the engine cover are brilliant. The traditional Red Bull advertising also slots seamlessly into the design. It’s pretty much perfect—even the VISA decals that seemed to dominate last year’s car now blend in nicely onto the sides.

Well done to team Racing Bulls! Their name came in for plenty of stick during the event, with Whitehall joking that he “can’t wait to see what they’ll be called next year” after changing from Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri already. But they’ve got one hell of a livery for 2025.

So, that sums up our impressions of the liveries unveiled at F1 75 Live. The event itself had all the glitz and glamour you’d expect from an F1 75 LIVE launch under the Liberty Media era.

But the proof will be in the pudding. Co-host Laura Winter teased that “this season is going to deliver.” After that level of buildup, it needs to.

Are you excited for the season ahead? Let us know what you think in the comment section below!