Retrotastic! What will the Williams livery be?
- Published on Jan 27th, 2011 by Adam MilleneuveTomorrow sees the launch of Ferrari's 2011 F1 car, called the F150 - (named so to celebrate 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy), expect the unveiling to be over before midday - and you can watch it online at Ferrari.com.
Now as far as car launches go, Ferrari's are pretty large affairs, but to be honest we're all definite that it's going to be red and will have plenty of Santander logos on it - so don't expect many surprises. As for the rest of the field, there's always a certain amount of excitement when we get the first sight of how the cars will look in 2011.
Lotus Renault GP unveiled their livery earlier than everyone (but not the car), at the Autosport show and as we knew already, it's a retro homage to the classic JPS (John Player Special) livery of Lotus in their heyday. This is the second year in a row for the Renault boys to produce a retro livery, 2010's yellow and black played homage to the original Renault F1 team colours back in the days of Rene Arnoux.
Now, out of nowhere, Badger has learned that Williams may well be following the trend of retro liveries - the question is, which one!? A fan of the team visited the Williams factory where Adam Parr said the livery "will be retro and you'll like it!" So, given the choice, what would you like to see the 2011 Williams looking like?
The classic FlySaudi colours?
The Blue/Yellow/White of Mansell's era?
The Red/White Winfield (hopefully not!)
The team will run an interim livery at the first test, so we'll have to wait a while to find out, but which of the Williams liveries would you like to see back in 2011? There are more than those mentioned above, including the lovely Rothmans one from the Hill era amongst them...
(Thanks to Gary Marshall for the pics - see his article on his trip to Williams HQ here)
The rest of the launch dates can be found: F1 2011 Launch Dates - Badger will be bringing you coverage of all launches and we'll be at the Virgin Racing and McLaren ones in person, tweeting live from the event - stay tuned to @BadgerGP
Comments and Discussion
I think the Rothmans is a bit too cigarette - the gold and red stripes are too much of their corporate id. Maybe the Mansell era would work if one of these Venezuala sponsors are yellow?
I would so love to see the blue/yellow/white colour scheme return. It's always been how I think of Williams. I have doubts about the classic colours trend, particularly when teams try to claim a heritage that isn't theirs, but Williams might just pull this off, and I'd love it if the new car was as competitive as the FW14.
How about a red and white McLaren? Perhaps with a black barcode down the side :-p
Or a blood red (as opposed to fag-packet red) Ferrari?
Don't forget Williams pulled this stunt a few years back, in 2008. They promised a series of special retro liveries and ended up with a navy blue car with different names and numbers at each of the four pre-season tests.
As much as this retro period is great, wouldn't it be better to move away from the past and try and build themselves a new image? Why run a retro livery celebrating title success when the team now finishes 6th? It tarnishes the legacy a bit really.
(Saying that, my vote is for the Saudi Air colours. Simple but effective!)
Fly Saudi colours for me. Classic Williams.
It has to be the '96 livery for me, best looking Williams to date
You could say the same of the 2011 Blck n Gold (JPS) Renault/Lotus (but new Lotus not old Lotus and different from the other Lotus, the old Lotus but not the really old proper Lotus even though they own the real old Lotus name and are based in Norfolk Lotus)
Rubens has just posted this on his twitter feed, but the test livery is all blue i think!
I tried to add a picture URL to the last post but it didn't work so heres a link
http://plixi.com/p/73857814
Williams often run an interim livery during testing - maybe the all dark-blue 'testing' livery helps to make it difficult to pick out details in photos (it wouldn't surprise us!)