The special livery selected by fans that Williams will use for the first of three races has been seen on the FW45 for the first time.
Williams, which normally appears in a dark blue colour scheme, is running a tribute livery for sponsor Gulf at Singapore this weekend. It will remain on the car for the following races at Suzuka and Losail.After signing a commercial sponsorship deal with the oil company at the start of the season, Williams announced a fan vote to decide which of four livery designs to run over the three rounds. The winning design, titled ‘bolder than bold’ won the final round after receiving 51.9% of votes, with around 180,000 total votes cast over the multiple rounds.
Williams team principal James Vowles said that the scheme would be a “defining moment” for his team.
“This competition was an incredible opportunity for our fans to actively engage and shape the visual identity of our team,” Vowles said. “The winning design encapsulates the essence of the Gulf and Williams Racing partnership, reflecting on the past but building on our future.”
It is the second time Gulf’s blue orange colour scheme has featured as a special livery during a race weekend in the last three seasons. In 2021, McLaren ran in the same colours at the Monaco Grand Prix during their own period of sponsorship from Gulf. McLaren are also running a revised livery at this weekend’s race for a sponsor.
Williams Singapore Grand Prix livery images
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Jere (@jerejj)
14th September 2023, 13:26
Decent temporary livery.
Roy Beedrill
14th September 2023, 14:00
Remember all the fuss about drivers changing their helmets design regularly?
Community went histerical:
“I couldn’t tell what driver it is anymore!”
“It goes agains traditions!!!”
“It’s a stupid and immature showoff!”
“They only care about money from sponsors!”
Eventually, drivers were even banned from this…
And now every team changes their whole car livery from one race to another. Huh?
I couldn’t care less about helmets. You can always tell who it is by the car/team, camera color and the number (please, show me a person being able to see details of drivers helmets watching from the grandstand or on TV). BUT I’m really getting tored of these car livery changes.
Honestly, when I opened this article, the first thing I thought was: “oh, racefans did it again and mixed up a Williams article with the photo of McLaren car”.
David
14th September 2023, 14:17
My thoughts exactly. Is that just the Monaco Gulf livery for McLaren?
Matthijs (@matthijs)
14th September 2023, 14:21
I did care about helmets. Senna’s helmet was legendary. My personal favourites Hakkinen and Hill had a very simple helmet design but very recognisable. Verstappen’s helmet will never be legendary, because it has been blue, red, yellow, gold and white already. His father’s design was much more appealing to me. Of course nowadays the high cockpits and the halo take away a lot of the appeal of the helmet.
PacificPR (@streydt)
14th September 2023, 14:42
I do like the occasional livery change for special occasions or just for.. well marketing I guess. However when it’s almost every other race it kinda defies the point – and no one will care anymore. Also I think to make a livery an iconic livery – it needs to grow, once a season is evolving and stories have been created – even a mediocre livery can become iconic. With changing a livery too often, it will just stay a (mediocre) livery.
asd
14th September 2023, 16:29
There are some great design ideas there! Great stuff. This would work as a McLaren livery as well.