F1 liveries are like dinner jackets. Most of them are either the same every time or just plain awful. But every now and then, some lunatic in marketing decides to throw tradition out of the garage window and do something different. And occasionally - very occasionally - it actually works. What follows is a lovingly compiled list of the finest, most pant-wettingly gorgeous liveries Formula 1 has ever seen. You're welcome.
McLaren's 2021 Monaco Gulf Livery - When Cool Became Legal Again
Now let's get one thing straight - Monaco is a race that thinks it's better than you. It has the yachts, the balconies, and the kind of champagne-fuelled snobbery that makes you want to drive through the harbour just to spite it. And for one fleeting weekend in 2021, McLaren brought a livery that made everyone stop pretending not to care and stare like gormless fans at the windows of a toy shop.
The Gulf livery. Pale blue and orange. It looked like Steve McQueen had personally risen from the dead, lit a cigarette, and slapped his blessing across the MCL35M. It wasn't just pretty. It was achingly, staggeringly, pointlessly beautiful - like a watch you'd never wear or a painting you'd never understand. McLaren didn't even win the thing. But for once, nobody cared. Because in that moment, motorsport was beautiful again.
Alfa Romeo 2021 Italian GP - The Tricolore That Made You Salute
Alfa Romeo has always had the kind of F1 presence that feels less like a team and more like a particularly posh guest who wandered into the wrong pitlane and decided to stay. But in Monza 2021, someone at Alfa realised that if you're racing in Italy, you should damn well look Italian doing it.
So they draped their car in a reimagined red and white livery - with a green flourish on the engine cover - a nod to the Italian tricolour that somehow made the C41 look faster even when it wasn't. Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi could've been driving a wheelbarrow, and it still would've turned heads. It was understated yet defiant, like a whisper in a shouting match. For a team usually ignored unless it crashes or retires (which it often did), this was a rare moment of pure, elegant patriotism. And it was bloody marvellous.
Scuderia Toro Rosso - Red Bull Cola: The Livery Nobody Asked For but We Secretly Loved
Right. Imagine: you're Red Bull. You already have one team drenched in corporate navy blue and logos bigger than most driver egos. What do you do with the other team? You paint it like a tin of your failed soft drink, naturally.
Enter Toro Rosso's Red Bull Cola livery - the absolute textbook definition of "this should not work". It was red, it was shiny, it looked like the lovechild of a sweet wrapper and a lava lamp. But in an era where every car looked like a Photoshop mistake in matte black or silver, it stood out. Like a clown at a funeral. And honestly? That was the point.
This livery didn't say, "we're here to win." It screamed, "We're not Red Bull, but we are... sort of?" It was silly, flamboyant, and somehow glorious in its stupidity. It looked like it had been designed by a seven-year-old with access to chrome paint and dreams. Bravo.
McLaren Marlboro - The Classic, the Cult, the Controversial
Ah, the Marlboro livery. Before the world decided that cigarettes were the devil's breath and banned everything with a hint of red and white branding, there was this absolute ICON of motorsport.
McLaren in Marlboro colours was a religion. The red and white diagonal was more recognisable than the cars themselves. Senna. Prost. Lauda. All raced with that livery, and each time it appeared on track, it whispered, "We're faster than you, and we look better doing it."
Yes, it was advertising cigarettes. Yes, it's technically naughty now. But in its prime, it was the look. Clean, bold, instantly identifiable. You saw it and you just knew it meant business. It was a tuxedo with the menace of a shotgun. Modern McLaren occasionally tries to hint at it with red accents or PR-approved "heritage nods", but nothing compares to the real thing. It was banned for a reason - because it was too cool (obviously not the smoking part).
McLaren 2022 Singapore and Japan - The MCL36 Future Fever Dream (My Favourite. Obviously.)
And now. The pièce de résistance. The wild, neon-flecked fever dream that was the McLaren MCL36 at the 2022 Singapore and Japanese Grands Prix. My personal favourite. Because how could it not be?
This wasn't just a livery. It was science fiction. It looked like Tron had gone racing. An electric invasion of the senses, like someone had thrown a rave onto a car and accidentally made it glorious. It was designed in collaboration with OKX, of all people – a cryptocurrency exchange that may or may not have understood that it had just made the most cyberpunk race car the sport had ever seen.
It was like watching Formula 1 in the year 2075. The black base livery gave it menace, the fluorescent accents gave it movement, and for two glorious races, McLaren stopped being that papaya-themed disappointment and turned into a spaceship.
And yes, I'm biased. Unashamedly so. Because when that car rolled out under the floodlights, I didn't care about strategy calls or tyre degradation or how many times they were going to bin it. I just stared. Open-mouthed. Because this livery didn't just look good - it looked right.
Honourable Mentions (Because I Make the Rules)
Yes, there were others. The Red Bull white livery in Turkey. Ferrari's weird burgundy for their 1000th race that looked like it had been soaked in wine. Even Mercedes' black car that felt like Darth Vader joined the constructors' championship. But none of them, none, hit quite like these five.
The beauty of a special livery is its fleeting magic - here for a weekend, gone forever. And for those of us who are in it for more than just the points and the podiums, these liveries are the stuff of posters, laptop wallpapers, and painfully nostalgic YouTube highlight reels. If only they brought them back more often. Because, frankly, some of these cars deserve to be stared at.
Oh, and if merely looking at these liveries isn't enough for you - we actually offer a Formula 1 Driving Experience in a real F1 Jordan. Yes, the iconic yellow buzzbomb that, if you're brave enough and fast enough, looks like a wasp on espresso charging toward a field of flowers. It's loud, it's raw, and it's the closest you'll get to being Jarno Trulli without needing a translator.
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