Red Bull and AlphaTauri to run Honda tribute liveries at Turkish Grand Prix

2021 Turkish Grand Prix

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The two Honda-powered Formula 1 teams will run special liveries at this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix, which was originally scheduled to be Japan’s round of the world championship.

Red Bull and AlphaTauri will sport “unique” liveries for this weekend’s race at Istanbul Park.

Red Bull’s RB16Bs will be painted in a largely white colour scheme based on the Honda RA272 F1 car which the team scored its first grand prix victory with in 1965.

AlphaTauri carry the message “arigato”, the Japanese word for “thank you”, on their rear wings.

This weekend’s race would have been Honda’s last on home ground before its departure from F1 at the end of the season. However the Suzuka race has been called off for the second year in a row due to the pandemic.

McLaren 2021 Monaco Grand Prix Gulf livery
Analysis: The change which allowed McLaren and other F1 teams to run one-off liveries
“We had all been looking forward to giving Honda’s Japanese fans a chance to celebrate our extremely successful relationship in Formula 1, on home soil at Suzuka,” said Red Bull CEO Christian Horner. “With the race falling victim to the pandemic, we just couldn’t let the weekend pass without paying tribute to Honda and its amazing home fans by bringing a little bit of its heritage to Istanbul.

“The livery chosen for our cars pays homage to Honda’s remarkable F1 journey and hopefully we can give fans another victory in those legendary colours this weekend.”

This will be the second time this year a team has run a special livery for a race. McLaren ran a different colour scheme for sponsor Gulf at the Monaco Grand Prix.

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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...

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26 comments on “Red Bull and AlphaTauri to run Honda tribute liveries at Turkish Grand Prix”

  1. Leonard ‘Big Lenny’ Persin (@)
    6th October 2021, 9:17

    Nnnice

  2. Awesome!

  3. Thanks for popping in Honda.

  4. Barry Bens (@barryfromdownunder)
    6th October 2021, 9:56

    Looking back at all of the liveries from the last decades, I’m still most blown away by the BAR-Lucky Strike one. If they manage to capture that image on the current cars (which might be a difficult challenge), I’d be a very happy man. Regardless of the outcome of the GP.

  5. I do love the MP4-4!

    In all seriousness, I love the special liveries (not so much Ferrari’s last year) but the McLaren Gulf special was gorgeous. I can’t wait to see the Red Bull and Alpha Tauri, they tend so be some of the best graphically designed cars.

  6. This is going to look awesome.

  7. White Bull and Toro Bianco

  8. If only F1 Fan Voice would run a rigged survey on whether fans want teams to run more one off liveries. I can see it now:

    “Do you want F1 teams to run special liveries?

    a) I don’t know what a livery is.
    b) Yes, I want teams to run a special livery at 1 race per year;
    c) Yes, I want teams to run a special livery at 7 races per year; or
    d) Yes, I want teams to run a different livery at every race.”

    1. Which one would you pick @geemac?

      1. Part of me likes the NASCAR approach of having 1 race a year where the teams run retro liveries, but that has too much of an “organised fun” vibe about it for me. I’d say once a year is plenty and the teams should be free to run it whenever suits them. Any more and the novelty would wear off pretty fast.

        1. Funny that you mention NASCAR, where cars regularly run completely different liveries from one week to the next, and who hold 41 race events in a season…

          Yeah, we can’t be having any fun in F1. Serious faces only, please.

          I wonder how much more money the smaller teams could raise if they were allowed to significantly alter their livery and sponsorship packages throughout a season… Kinda like NASCAR…

    2. @geemac you forgot e) only for sprint races

      Then the next question would be: “How does your enjoyment of sprint races be affected by running special liveries?”
      a) I like it even more
      b) The same

    3. B) @Monaco Gp….anyways there isn’t much overtaking that week, atleast we can ogle the liveries.

  9. Hopefully Max sports a Richie Ginther tribute helmet to go with it!

  10. I wish the one-off liveries looked like the successful late-original turbo era/early-V12 era cars instead.
    I wonder if the wording on AT rear wings will be in transliterated or Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana form.

    1. It is hiragana. Take a look.

  11. Stephen Higgins
    6th October 2021, 12:05

    Maybe we could have a one-off ‘retro’ round where all the teams are allowed to run a one off livery based on iconic cars of the[ir] past, like in NASCAR and Supercars.

    1. Patrick Poirier
      6th October 2021, 22:13

      Would HAAS run the ‘Rich Energy’ livery? LOL

  12. Hope they go all the way with revised driver overalls, helmets. Not just the livery.

    1. Ah, the Mercedes approach… 2019 Hockenheim.

  13. I suddenly feel an urge to smoke.

    1. Have a drink instead. It will calm you nerves and comes in jaunty containers without lungs on them.

    2. What about crashing planes to ships?

  14. So awesome can’t wait to see the car!!!

  15. playstation361
    10th October 2021, 20:16

    Nice sheet.

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