Alpine will run in a predominantly orange livery at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix having revealed its third change of design this year.
Meanwhile McLaren are bringing back the retro-style chrome-coloured livery they raced last year.The Alpine A524s will run in a special livery to promote the upcoming video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Many video games have appeared on F1 cars in the past. Williams famously included Sega and Sonic the Hedgehog branding on its dominant FW15C as early as 1993.
However this is believed to be the first time a team has produced a special livery specifically for the launch of a new game. Alpine has launched the promotion in conjunction with sponsor Xbox, though the game will also be available for PlayStation and PC formats.
While much of the A524’s livery will remain black, the coloured sections will be predominantly orange at this weekend’s race in Austin. The livery also features graphics seen in the films on which the game is based. The game’s logos also appear on the car and drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon will wear special overalls.
Alpine previously turned their cars red at the Belgian Grand Prix to promote the film Deadpool and Wolverine. The A524s have also run in pink liveries at several races as part of a long-running deal with title sponsor BWT.
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McLaren is the only other team to have changed liveries as often as Alpine this year. They previously ran special designs in Japan, Monaco and the last round in Singapore.
The chrome-coloured livery is intended to recall the team’s colour scheme of 2006-2014. During that time the team enjoyed its most recent championship success, when Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 drivers’ title.
Other teams have moved away from using special liveries. Red Bull originally announced plans to use three special liveries this year, but abandoned the project in order to avoid adding excess weight to their car.
At least one other team has tweaked its livery this weekend. Haas will run special graphics on their cars for their home race.
Pictures: Alpine’s special livery for the 2024 United States Grand Prix
Pictures: McLaren’s special livery for the 2024 United States Grand Prix
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2024 United States Grand Prix
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Sam Crawford
15th October 2024, 14:35
Can’t wait to wonder why there’s a McLaren struggling at the back of the grid for a minute, only to realise it’s an Alpine
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
15th October 2024, 15:05
special
adjective
1.
better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.
2.
exactly the same as McLaren
Enstone never really seem to help themselves
BasCB (@bascb)
15th October 2024, 15:38
:-)
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
15th October 2024, 18:59
Alpine observed carefully and found out the colour was the main difference to the top of the field and have addressed the issue. This combined with the decision to go for Mercedes engine should definitely move them up the grid.
(dark purple fonts)
Dex
15th October 2024, 15:02
When will this mockery end?
Nick T.
16th October 2024, 13:51
What mockery? It’s so fashionable for fans and media alike to act like Enstone has always been and will always be an absolute a joke since they lost Piastri and Alonso in a single day followed by a ridiculous game musical chairs with personnel, but the team has been either solidly in the midfield or at the the head of the midfield for around a decade until now. I’d rather lose multiple other teams before them and I’m not even a fan.
mzs16 (@mzs16)
15th October 2024, 16:05
In the meantime it looks like McLaren might be doing a stunt too… surely they have coordinated with Alpine to avoid having 4 orange cars on the grid?
mzs16 (@mzs16)
15th October 2024, 16:07
Ah ok McL are going chrome again, but only splashes… so there WILL be 4 orange cars after all :)
Ideals (@ideals)
15th October 2024, 16:27
I vote we stop calling the countless one-off liveries that are done by teams, especially Alpine and McLaren these days, “variant liveries” instead of “special liveries” as I do think we can stop calling things special after they become the norm rather than the exception, honestly.
Much like changing helmets, I’d much prefer if it really was an exceptional thing to do on a very special occasion, rather than “we’re in America now so we must be doing a special livery.”
Ideals (@ideals)
15th October 2024, 16:49
start calling*
Simon
15th October 2024, 20:45
* should be proofreading
Jere (@jerejj)
16th October 2024, 14:46
Simon Anyone can make a typo or mistakenly choose a wrong word.
Nick T.
17th October 2024, 6:44
Simon says I come ‘round only to post inexplicable attacks on other readers.
AlanD
15th October 2024, 17:00
Very much agree. The colour of the car is part of the identity of the car, something that fans can relate to, something that is key for people watching the sport to allow them to identify what is happening. Changing the colour likes this beneifts no-one but an advertiser.
Same with helmet colours. They used to be bold designs and you could easily identify drivers at a glance and at a distance. Remember Senna’s distinctive yellow, Hill’s rowing club bars,…. nowadays they are so covered in logos and elaborate complicated designs that from a distance most are just a blur of colour.
Tristan
15th October 2024, 22:37
Can’t please everyone, when FIA (or was it FOM) cracked down on helmet designs when Vettel started doing it, drivers were pretty vocal about it and they reverted the rules.
Literally can’t please everyone, someone will always complain about how it should be.
SteveR (@stever)
15th October 2024, 16:29
That will definitely make the Alpine faster!!!
Jere (@jerejj)
15th October 2024, 18:01
I like this particular Alpine temporary livery quite a lot, if anything, even more than the Belgian GP one.
McLaren simply returns to the chrome mixture from a few other recent past rounds in principle.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
15th October 2024, 18:12
If you photograph something under an intense orange light, then it is going to look orange.
Konstantinos
15th October 2024, 20:06
Wait wait, there will be no confusion because the Mclarens are papaya coloured remember? Completely different
MacLeod (@macleod)
16th October 2024, 8:06
Orange and Papaya is total different the one is lighter the other is darker …. very easy to see.
John Beak (@johnbeak)
15th October 2024, 20:14
Is this a ploy for Oscar to step into the wrong orange car and finally drive for Alpine?
Mooa42
15th October 2024, 23:50
Maybe it is Alpine hoping McLaren will buy them as a B team?
It should be easy to tell them apart because the Alpine’s will have a blue flag waving in front of them.
Biggsy
15th October 2024, 23:30
One thing that is true to most of the cars for the last 10 years, is that the liveries look so disjointed.
They are too detailed in their various shapes, if you consider the intricacy of the cars themselves. You then get this mess and noise and clutter, that feels like everything is just an afterthought.
Ferrari and Red Bull are probably the only ones who aren’t guilty of this, as their liveries are pretty much one-color only. And with cars these days, I think most of the liveries should be that way. Or at least less complicated regarding various shapes and color schemes. Aston Martin also isn’t too bad. Mercedes used to look great, but nowadays it seems like they can’t decide which way to paint their car, so they just randomly put silver or black in the most displeasing ways possible. It simply looks like these liveries aren’t designs, but just uninspired decorations.
I have the same issue with the helmet designs. There are a few good ones, but most of them are just an absolute mess of various shapes and colors. I wish some of these drivers would hire an actual designer, instead of illustrator with no sense of context. What’s wrong with having a Graham Hill style of helmet? That thing is iconic. Helmets these days all look like just a bunch of color splatter, where you can’t tell what’s going on, and they all just end up looking the same.
So disappointing all around…
MichaelN
15th October 2024, 23:55
Very few teams these days have the ability to tell sponsors how their logo’s will be used. That’d usually be by using the ‘secondary’ sponsors in all white or black. McLaren had this back in the Vodafone days. Ferrari and Red Bull can usually get away with this, although Ferrari has also been somewhat fortunate (or picky?) that their main sponsors went well with their basic colour scheme (red and white with a bit of Shell). But HP is now using its blue logo and it kinda messes up that design.
It’s unfortunate indeed, and the last 10+ years have been so grey/black/blue. The early 2000s had yellow Jordans, red and white Toyotas, green Jaguars, bright blue and yellow Renaults, white BARs, red Ferraris, dark blue and white Williams. Even that picture earlier in the week of the 2009 grid with the Toyotas up front was so much more colourful – and thus recognizable – than today.
Paul A (@paul-a)
16th October 2024, 0:01
Anyone remember the old Brtitish racing green, Italian red, French blue, German Silver? There’s a few remnants, but then we had ‘sponsors’ — John Player Special black and gold … then we had acid hallucinations … the rest is history.
anon
16th October 2024, 8:39
@paul-a not really, given that the colour designations were arbitrary and never particularly seriously enforced, and several countries are now associated with national racing colours that actually belonged to somebody else – for example, you talk about “Italian red”, but that was originally what cars from the USA used, whilst Germany originally used white and later changed to silver because it was considered more aesthetically pleasing.
Even things like “old British racing green” was rather arbitrary, given that multiple teams used completely different shades of green and the term really just meant a racecar entered by a British team that happened to be green.
Nick T.
16th October 2024, 0:56
We can’t tell what the car will look from those images to be honest.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
16th October 2024, 1:30
Gee, when I was involved in high level sport I was massively superstitious – especially if on a winning streak. I’d go to pretty extreme lengths to make sure everything remained the same, be it warm up routine, outfit, equipment etc.
Let’s hope neither of the McLaren drivers are.
Michael A.
16th October 2024, 6:02
Obviously the cost cap is not low enough.
They both look dreadful, the TV commentators have my sympathy.
Nick T.
16th October 2024, 13:53
For how much effort goes into these cars, it’s amazing how pathetic and unimaginative F1 teams are at putting together liveries.
Leo B
16th October 2024, 10:28
No 1 in the Papaya Rules: Never allow Alpine to use orange on their cars.
Broken already.