McLaren asks other teams to join 'throwback livery' trend

In the wake of the recently presented retro Gulf livery with which McLaren will appear on the grid in Monaco, drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, as well as McLaren-CEO Zak Brown, advocate for a normalisation of special edition liveries in Formula 1.

Daniel Ricciardo expressed his delight at the idea, which is already the norm in NASCAR. "I’m aware it’s another expense for the team but that aside, for everything to be a throwback — not just our race suits, but casual wear, down to team hats, to properly do it — that would be cool for everyone to get involved. Spark it!”, the Australian said to RACER.

Norris mostly agrees with his current teammate, stating that the history of Formula 1 has plenty of classic liveries worth digging up. Norris: "The proper old school ones would be pretty awesome. … A lot of teams have had awesome and unique liveries over the years and it would be cool if everyone came up with their own.

Brown, ever the businessman, also sees a benefit to the Formula One viewing public, and comes up with a number of possibilities: "Whether we do it as other sports do where everyone does it at the same time or when you are in your home country or you have a reason or an anniversary. … We don’t want to confuse the fans and lose our identity, but I think to do something a few times a year that’s special creates some excitement and some additional engagement with the fans.”