McLaren’s Monaco Gulf livery inspired 2022 F1 colour tweak

The Woking-based team unveiled its new MCL36 at its factory on Friday, and the new Mercedes-powered car features more fluorescent orange and blue colours than it had in 2021.

The team said that the decision to tweak its traditional papaya was made as it wanted to do something special for F1’s new era, and it saw how well its Gulf-branded car went down with fans at last year’s Monaco Grand Prix.

The tweaked orange is the same, so-called Fluro Papaya orange that was raced at Monte Carlo, alongside what is officially called New Blue.

Speaking about the livery change, McLaren CEO Zak Brown said: “We've been evolving our livery since we've got back to papaya.

“We wanted something that was very vibrant and change the shade of our papayas.

“I think the livery changes that we did last year, both in Monaco and in Abu Dhabi, we had a lot of great fan reaction, and they liked to see a lot of energy.

“I think it's got some nice speed and elegance to it, that we thought would go on top of the fast race car that hopefully we've designed this year. So it's just a natural evolution, and also trying to make sure we give all of our corporate partners a good stand out on the car.”

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M, at Monaco 2021

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

While the colours are very reminiscent of the Gulf livery that was raced in Monaco, McLaren says that the shift has not been triggered by any ramp of sponsorship from the oil company.

“Gulf has not increased their commitment to us,” added Brown.

McLaren is using the exact same orange and blue on both its IndyCar and Extreme E challengers, with Brown thinking that consistency across the racing series will help the brand.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL36

Photo by: McLaren

“We're McLaren Racing,” he said. “Formula 1 is clearly our centre of gravity if you like. We think as a single racing entity, so if we can tie our racing programmes together that is positive.

“I think they look fantastic along with the Extreme E and esports, so we wanted people to be able to look at them and be able to go ‘yeah, that's a McLaren’ regardless of the racing series that you're looking at.”