McLaren is once again using a special livery for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.
The team has made a habit of varying its livery for F1’s iconic race through the streets of Monte-Carlo. It will use the same design, which it has created in conjunction with sponsor OKX, at the Spanish Grand Prix next week.
It has named this year’s design ‘Riviera’ and it is styled on the livery used on their first race-winning F1 car, the M7A, which the team raced in 1968 and 1969. Team founder Bruce McLaren scored their first victory in the car at Spa in 1968 and Denny Hulme took it to three further victories.
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Pictures: McLaren’s recent Monaco Grand Prix liveries
This is the fourth occasion in the last five years McLaren has significantly varied its livery for the Monaco Grand Prix. It began with a tribute to sponsor Gulf in 2021 which recreated a design seen on many past racing cars.For the 2023 race McLaren tied its livery in with three special designs it used for the Indianapolis 500, held on the same day. The team marked its victories in the ‘triple crown’ of races: the Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours. Last year’s design was a tribute to its former driver Ayrton Senna in the year which marked the 30th anniversary of his death.
The only time McLaren has not produced a special livery for the Monaco Grand Prix was in 2022. This was the year F1 introduced its ‘ground effect’ technical regulations, when many teams were having difficulty getting their cars down to the minimum weight limit, and teams tended to avoid using different liveries which might add weight.
2024: Ayrton Senna
2023: Triple Crown
2021: Sponsor (Gulf)
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Archibald Bumfluff
21st May 2025, 14:16
Now that’s a good looking car
BasCB (@bascb)
21st May 2025, 16:14
Great to see the car when the livery is not as cluttered by all the decals and sponsorship notices as well as allowed to have more orange on it because the weight penalty is not as much of an issue at Monaco!
bull mello (@bullmello)
21st May 2025, 17:06
It is very nice!
Femke
21st May 2025, 14:48
Nice color. What are the technical upgrades for this high downforce race? Do both drivers get those upgrades? Do they have enohgh of those upgrades in case of crashing into walls?
Ideals (@ideals)
21st May 2025, 14:57
It’s the same picture.
sam
21st May 2025, 15:12
Change a couple stickers around and Bingo! Special Monaco livery….
Jere (@jerejj)
21st May 2025, 15:26
Only marginally different from the standard livery as opposed to the 2021, 2023, & 2024 ones, which differ more broadly from the respective season-specific standard liveries, with the 2024 one being my outright favorite among McLaren’s Monaco GP special liveries.
Adam (@rocketpanda)
21st May 2025, 15:30
The Gulf, Senna and Triple Crown liveries were beautiful, really nice looking cars. This one is just moving the pattern around.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
21st May 2025, 15:47
They should’ve rendered it floating in the harbour with all the other yachts. BOOM!
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
21st May 2025, 16:21
There’s something about cars with a white circle and the number slightly inclined one way. It always looks great.
Coventry Climax
23rd May 2025, 0:34
Yeah, readable, mainly.
Doesn’t even need to be slanted, just upright worked fine for Herbie, the love bug.
OK, upright at the sides, and slanted at the nose, that looked good – and readable- on the Lotus 25, although that might also have ha something to do with the car itself.
And what engine was in there again.. ehmm…. ;-)
Obster
21st May 2025, 16:41
It needs to say “McLAREN CARS” in block lettering with Lando or Oscar’s name in Script.
Would not be hard to do and would seal the deal on the M7 reference
Coventry Climax
21st May 2025, 17:00
It feels like most of the teams have been using one off, special liveries for each of the weekends sofar, to the point that it’s nothing special at all anymore and I don’t even notice it, apart from experiencing a bit of extra trouble to identify cars and drivers.
And what’s the point of having a ‘standard’ livery now? Just to attract attention for the the ‘start of season joint team presentation marketing event’, where they show mock up cars everyone knows they won’t be running anyway?
It’s like seeing a ‘gourmet, special limited edition’ product in a supermarket, where you know there’s another 1500 supermarkets around anyway, and all of them have quite an extensive stock. Heck, it’s in their national or even global advertisements, right?
Nothing special about it anymore. I don’t remember any of the more recent ‘special’ liveries anyway. The old ones that I do remember because they were iconic cars, weren’t special liveries at all; they were the standard. It’s the cars that made them iconic.
And these days, they’re not inventive anyway: All of them just hark back to the former days of glory.
How about creating your own, new glory?
You’d need a car that stands out, performance-wise, and actually achieve something on track, alright.
That won’t happen again though, with how the FiA and Liberty run things these days.
Seems it’s all just to distract from there being nothing special about F1 and its cars otherwise anymore, and they do nothing for car performance or improvement of the racing in general.
There used to be a time where you could be sure that anything that was on those cars, was designed an intended to bring extra performance.
Energy wasted on fluffy pretty cow dung.
Biggsy
22nd May 2025, 14:17
Sad to say, I pretty much agree with the most of it.
I passionately loath anything retro. It never feels like an honest homage. It always feels like dishonest nostalgia-baiting for cheap social points.
Especially with every race these days being some “special” livery. Getting old real quick, especially when there’s nothing special about any of them. I can respect Red Bull’s (never thought I’d say respect and Red Bull in the same sentence) Japan special livery, because it is rarely hyped up like these Monaco “specials”, and it makes sense, as it’s the racing colors of their engine partner for their home race, plus it’s actually completely different from their standard livery.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
21st May 2025, 22:28
It’s better than their usual car numbers, but that’s not saying much.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
22nd May 2025, 14:58
These “one off” things are starting to be meaningless when you seem to have a one off change of livery during about 20% of the season….