F1 wants to impose more recognizable livery in 2025

With the return of televised images, it has been highlighted that it has become difficult to distinguish certain single-seaters. In particular, the liveries of Aston Martin, Mercedes, Williams, and Red Bull have been singled out for their sometimes indiscernible appearance at high speeds.

This issue of visual similarity has been exacerbated by the fact that teams have increasingly reduced the paint on their cars in recent years to save weight, leading to a greater presence of unpainted black carbon, identical on all cars.

Sources have revealed that discussions have started with teams to address this situation next year, in order to ensure greater diversity on the grid and avoid cars having similar colors. However, the situation is complex because, although the FIA and FOM want to solve this problem for the good of F1 fans, they also do not want to impose strict regulations.

Nikolas Tombazis, in charge of single-seaters at the FIA, said that the issue would be addressed at the upcoming F1 Commission meeting in an attempt to find a solution. As always in F1, it’s a bit more complicated than it seems, he told Autosport. The problem is that the cars have a bit too much naked carbon, obviously because of the weight of the paint, so the cars are a bit too black. There has also been a lot of work done by all the teams to change the type of paint or even use extremely thin films, in order to keep the weight as low as possible.

« Another issue is that some teams seem to be using similar color schemes, which causes too much visual confusion. We are still discussing this with the teams, and it will be addressed at the next F1 Commission meeting.

Tombazis believes that the best way to resolve this situation is to collaborate with the teams rather than constrain them with new rules. We need to find a process where teams communicate with each other and say: Well, if your car is blue here, mine won’t be blue there. Or something like that. But exactly how this process would work [remains to be seen]. It is not a regulatory process. We do not want to establish regulations on liveries as the FIA, but we want the cars to be distinguishable.

Same problem with helmets.

With less iconic helmet designs than before, it is not as easy to recognize the drivers individually as it was in the past. Currently, the only way in which teams are obliged to differentiate their two cars is with a flash of color on their onboard cameras. The article 9.1 c) of the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations requires: « The onboard cameras located above the main structure of the first car must remain as supplied to the Competitor, and the second car must be mainly fluorescent yellow in color. »

The F1 wants to assess if there are better ways to better recognize each driver from each team. Tombazis added: « It is true that in the past, drivers had more recognizable helmets because the designs were simpler. And they were probably like that throughout their whole career. Now, there is a change in regulations [allowing the changing of helmet designs] and they have all these strange colors, you can’t see the helmet anyway because of the halo. We need to find a way to ensure that people can tell if it’s [George] Russell or [Lewis] Hamilton, but also be able to easily distinguish between the cars. »

But, as with the issue of liveries, the FIA wants it to be something that teams take care of themselves rather than being forced to do so by new rules. « It’s not something we want to include in a regulation and then report someone to the stewards because we don’t like the color », said Tombazis. « We don’t want to go there. But we want to reach a point where teams see that it is in the common interest for the cars to be recognizable. »