Pastor Maldonado, Williams, Circuit of the Americas, 2013

New Williams driver overalls indicate heritage colours will return in coming livery change

2020 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by

Williams will reveal a new look for its FW43 in the coming days following the departure of title sponsor Rokit.

As RaceFans revealed yesterday, the team’s former title sponsor is expected to switch its allegiance to Mercedes, potentially in time for the first race of the season.

Williams has said it will present its car in a revised livery ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix, the first practice session for which begins a week tomorrow.

A Photoshopped image of their current car without its Rokit logos has already been seen on the team’s website.

However the team’s official photography of its drivers’ new overalls are likely to provide a better guide to the final look of the car. Pictures issued earlier showed the red Rokit colouring has disappeared entirely, leaving a white and pale blue design.

New images which have appeared on the official Formula 1 site indicate Italian coffee brand Lavazza, which is linked to the team via Nicholas Latifi, will have an increased presence on the car. Its logo is dark blue, which would fit with Williams heritage colouring, last seen on the car in 2013 before Rokit’s predecessor Martini arrived as title sponsor.

Last month Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams said she has confidence in her team’s ability to attract new sponsors.

“We very much feel that we look after our partners in a fantastic way,” she said. “There’s been plenty of evidence of that over the years with many of Williams’s partners remaining with the team in the long term.

We have also, just in the past three months, put in a whole new process around our commercial proposition,” she added. “We’re working with a new agency and we’re very much redeveloping the way in which we go and take Williams to market and we have huge confidence in that.

“Williams has always done a good job attracting new partners into our sport, into our team and I believe and have every confidence that we will continue to do so.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2020 F1 season

Browse all 2020 F1 season articles

Nicholas Latifi, Williams, Circuit de Catalunya
Williams will not race in the livery it ran during pre-season testing

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

23 comments on “New Williams driver overalls indicate heritage colours will return in coming livery change”

  1. Is there a @dieterrencken article about the logic behind F1 sponsorship? Williams is a team with a great heritage, a family story, some of the best drivers in history drove for them. I’m not a businessman, so I may be wrong, but I would be happy to place my company logo on their car; I mean, there are 3 winning teams, it’s not that all the others get no sponsors. McLaren is on the rise, and this makes a big difference, but it’s astonishing how many sponsorships they are able to take, in their latest images the livery is completely covered with sponsors names… and yet, Williams is practically empty. Same happened with Brawn GP, very few sponsors even if they were proven winners during that one-off season. So, I simply don’t get it: is it just Zack Brown particularly talented (or whoever takes that responsibility)?

    1. Cristiano Ferreira
      25th June 2020, 8:44

      Zack Brown is talented in that aspect, that’s one of the reasons McLaren signed him, to at least find sponsors for the team, a task that he is doing pretty well so far.

      Despite the fact that Williams has a great heritage, unfortunately that’s in the past and that’s what matters in business. No one wants be associated with a team that is dead last in the championship despite its history, no matter how successfull it was.

      Being last means less time on air, so its less time in advertising.

      1. Zack Brown is talented in that aspect, that’s one of the reasons McLaren signed him, to at least find sponsors for the team, a task that he is doing pretty well so far.

        It took Zak a lot longer than we all expected (and he initially indicated). I recall many critical reviews on this site.
        And I’m not even sure that the totality of sponsor income for them is that impressive; just look at @DieterRencken‘s article yesterday. We don’t know how much the road car division is bleeding, but overall investors have put in many hundreds of millions over the past few years.

      2. To put that into perspective, losing TAG Heuer as a sponsor off the back of a spat with Ron Dennis was a contributing factor to Brown getting the job in the first place: ergo he is a marketing man and his job, as you say, is to find new sponsors.

    2. Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
      25th June 2020, 8:46

      Its all about notoriety/exposure. Mercedes is in the limelight, and they have one of the most popular drivers in racing, who has huge reach outside of F1.

      While we, as fans of the sport, might want to sponsor teams like Williams, the heritage means nothing to sponsors. Truth be told Williams is on a downward trajectory. Nobody wants to be a part of that. Looks at Haas, when they were hot, they got a title sponsorship (even considering how shady they were), when they started heading to the back of the field, they lost sponsor(s). If Williams were in the top 1/2 of the field, they’d probably have way more sponsors.

    3. @m-bagattini

      What you can’t see, are the commercial agreements behind those sponsors on the McLaren car. Who knows what they’re truly worth – I can totally see the ‘value’ in agreeing basic commercial deals so there are sponsor logos on the car. it’s a form of social proof – you can sponsor us, look at this embarrassment of riches, look at all these other companies who want their logo on our car, imagine if that was your logo instead!

      One thing I’ve learned about the world of motorsports, it’s not the team with the hundred little logos that’s making the money. It’s the team with the one big logo, or better yet, the branded livery. Note that McLaren doesn’t have a title sponsor, for all its commercial partners.

    4. tony mansell
      25th June 2020, 14:58

      McLarens concept seems to be the opposite of the Dennis era when they wanted huge money but got most of the car in return. Its now more like the classified ads, albeit more blue chip than chip shop. BUT they get more than just space on the car, the tie up includes all sorts of events and tie ups that would make a Kimi keel over. It works for them on that colour scheme.

      What I don’t get is this rush to Mercedes, Rokit got great exposure on the Williams albeit Rokit are a bit naff and the spelling is naffuh. Not what we have come to expect in F1, Lavazza is at least a premium brand. Maybe Mercedes will take that one as well next year. They know no shame as the reverse grid veto showed.

      1. Pretty sure it was Williams’ choice to end the deal, not Rokit’s. That’s what reports seem to indicate anyway

    5. Great point, I am think that McLaren has been very clever in building a brand whereas Williams hasn’t really built one, redbull was a brand before F1 and Ferrari has also built a brand. By that I mean people will wear their logos, watches, drive their cars, baseball caps etc. Mercedes sells watches, aftershave, shirts etc by the bucket load as well as pretty fine cars. So I guess the exposure is greater with these teams for the other sponsors. I worked for Coca Cola when they landed the sponsorship of Jenson Button in the Brawn. Halfway through the season the Monster longer appeared on Jenson’s helmet (and it was upside down for the camera) it took a lot of negotiation and money. Williams is my favourite team and I would love to see them back at the front.

  2. Tommy Scragend
    25th June 2020, 9:50

    Interesting concept of “heritage”. Williams cars were only dark blue & white between 2000 (start of Compaq sponsorship, after the awful Winfield red) and 2013.

    The iconic Williams livery I would say is the white/blue/yellow of the Canon/ICI/Camel years. I know they didn’t carry that one for as long as they were dark blue & white, but it was their most successful period and I’d say if you ask anyone over a certain age to picture a Williams, that’s the one they would think of.

    1. Heritage refers to their corporate colours. If you look at their website you’ll note that the colours are traditionally blue/white.

      1. Tommy Scragend
        25th June 2020, 11:16

        @dieterrencken Ah I see. I didn’t realise they had an actual “Williams Heritage” programme. I stand corrected.

    2. Graham (@guitargraham)
      25th June 2020, 10:38

      you have to go back to the Piers Courage days to find the original dark blue/white corp colours.. and that goes a long way to explaining the family’s love of those colours

    3. I think you missed the Rothmans livery..

    4. They had blue and white cars between 1994 and 1997 as well.

  3. The official F1 website today also made an effort of disguising the Williams with ROKit sponsoring (link)

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      25th June 2020, 10:59

      Haha what a bizarre bit of photo editing… Who did that and thought “yep – nailed it”!?

    2. Haha! Bizarrely enough the ‘RockiT’ logo is the least blurred part of that photo! Dreadful showing there.

  4. @petebaldwin Ha! It looks like it’s moving in three different directions!

  5. Derek Edwards
    25th June 2020, 11:32

    Lavazza? At least Williams are finally admitting that it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

    1. Hope the car is a bit more robusta and that it works well on Arabica tracks.

  6. The last couple of years’ Williams livery was aweful, for my taste at least. Totally uninspiring and neutral.

    Hopefully the new ‘heritage’ livery will be much more striking and give the fans a reason to smile about, as they’re in for another difficult season.

  7. I thought the 2012 Williams had a beautiful livery.. and so did the Martini Williams livery. The nostalgia they created with those retro liveries was awesome. Let’s see if they return to that route in 2020

Comments are closed.