On McLaren Honda’s Livery

McLaren Honda unveiled their 2015 competitor, the MP4–30, about a month ago with distinctly McLaren livery. It’s color scheme matches the brand’s modern identity, but surprisingly, many people had a strong negative reaction to it. The team never suggested it is going back to the iconic Marlboro livery, but it seems the PR work of the team leading up to the launch was misinterpreted as such.

To get the obvious out of the way: the Marlboro livery is strictly Marlboro. Associating it with McLaren’s identity seems odd when Marlboro’s partnerships elsewhere ended up looking identical to the old McLarens. Doing a Google image search you will find these Indy cars, these rally cars, and just general racing cars. There was also a McLaren Cosworth, McLaren Porsche, McLaren Ford, McLaren Peugeot, and last but not least McLaren Mercedes all sharing the same livery. There were more prior to the Ron Dennis era as well.

This brings us to West branding on the MP4–12. Based on the team history, we might conclude that the title sponsor is driving the livery rather than the engine supplier. Practically all teams take this route, and the West logo uses black text with two stripes: one red and one either gold or silver. On the McLaren they chose to go with silver. Despite this, Ron Dennis may have chosen to follow a different route in 1997. He may have decided to give McLaren it’s own unique identity similar to Ferrari^[1]. There are good reasons why Dennis would do this now. First, the team separated from Marlboro backing which clears the canvas for new livery. Additionally, after Dennis took over ownership of the team in 1981, McLaren went from being a team with one constructor’s and two driver’s championships to a team with seven constructor’s and nine driver’s championships. They also released arguably the most impressive road car in the world that finished 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th in its first attempt at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It’s understandable that Dennis would want to turn McLaren into an internationally recognizable brand no matter who is backing them financially.

Maybe it was not obvious at the time that the livery was not sponsor-driven, but in hindsight there are clues that the iconic black, silver, and red that impressed the world in 1997 is McLaren and not West. We saw Vodafone take over title sponsorship in the last decade, and still, Mclaren used variations of that livery. They did the same again last year without a title sponsor.

The idea that the McLaren PR team was hinting at a return to red and white baffles me most and yet is the easiest to respond to. The team was simply building up hype about a new partnership with Honda using images of the previously successful Honda partnership, which happen to have red and white Marlboro livery.

This expectation may seem easy to write about after the fact, but the reaction came as a surprise. Of course people play around with and post livery designs on the internet, and they glamorize the old Marlboro MP4–4. But it seemed like it was exactly that: playing around with personal creativity and glamorizing. If anyone worked up the expectation for a red and white McLaren, it was the people who wanted it.

I imagine the team will continue to use variations of this theme when they secure a new title sponsor and further into the future. McLaren is now more than a Formula 1 team; they supply technology, build road cars, and probably more to come. Their modern symbol will only become a stronger branding tool in the future.