2014 Car Launches

Personally I'll be surprised if they change the colour scheme. Strangely, for such a fickle thing, I think it would remove a lot of what's left of whatever feelings I had for McLaren. They've been my favourite team since I really remember first watching F1 properly, in the Coulthard/Hakkinen days, but they've lost the likes of Raikkonen, Alonso and Hamilton in (fairly) recent times and personally there's just not much left for me to get excited about. If they get rid of the silver as well then I don't think they will feel like McLaren to me at all any more.

Anyway, the season's barely over and already it's only a few weeks until we start seeing the new cars. Great! Well, great until we see how bad they sound and how ugly and slow they are...
 
When they got rid of the Marlboro colours and went silver I hated it. Happy for them to dump the silver and go old school. The orange is cool.
m14A.png

1970 McLaren M14A
 
Red and white were the Marlborough colours. Silver were the West/Mercedes colours. Generally the colour of a car is determined by sponsors. Are Vodafone continuing to sponsor the mac? Which would mean red, or Santander which would also mean red.

Orange mobile phones are now EE so they're not suitable to be a McLaren sponsor who would influence their colours. What other companies would want to put orange branding on a car other than McLaren themselves? Works for Ferrari but does the car manufacturing side of the company make enough to support the F1 side?
 
The silver/red looks great close up or in official pics but doesn't work for me so well at a distance. Might be the high reflectivity. I prefer the primary colours of red/white. Orange has been devalued a little in F1 in recent years by Spyker!
 
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Did nobody actually read the article or take notice during the season Vodaphone ended their sponsorship with McLaren at the end of the season and we have known this would be case for about six month, McLaren say they have a new main sponsor but have not announced who it is yet which is probably why they will launch the car in orange to keep the sponsors identity a secret until both parties are ready.
 
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I'd be surprised if a new sponsor isn't announced either before or at the launch of the new car. For all we know the new sponsor could also use red, so McLaren might stick with their current livery. Especially seeing as how they're still using Mercedes engines for one more season, back to white/red for 2015 and Honda I think.
 
In fact, I think the trend has been away from sponsor-orientated livery for about the last decade.
  • Red Bull/Toro Rosso - they're generally their own sponsors so a weird case, but just slight modifications for Infiniti/CEPSA
  • Ferrari - Red forever
  • Mercedes - Silver with slight modification for Petronas
  • Lotus/Caterham - Fought long court battle to take historic Lotus liveries despite sponsors' colours
  • Force India - National flag of India
  • Sauber - No sponsor has plain grey as a corporate colour
  • Williams - Using blue and white colour scheme regardless of sponsor
  • Marussia - Kept Virgin scheme after Virgin departed
Really, McLaren (& the odd case of Red Bull) is the only sponsor-scheme left.
 
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