They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder – that the perception of beauty is subjective and what one person finds attractive may not another. But when you use the most popular color combination in motorsport – Gulf Racing blue and orange – is it possible to come up with a paint job that everyone likes, and how do you go about it? Now the covers have peeled off our special paint job that celebrates the historic partnership between McLaren Racing and Gulf Oil International. We thought we’d find out before it hit the track at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Can you really design a paint job that appeals to everyone? “The short answer is’ no,” “says Ed Sullivan, director of creative for McLaren Racing. “You will never please everyone. It is impossible to be everything for everyone, but we understand our fans well enough to know what appeals to them. The golf paintwork we designed reflects this. “
“Almost every car that wears the golf colors immediately becomes iconic,” said Louise McEwen, McLaren Racing’s Brand Director. “The paintwork is one of the most admired in motorsport: It is very well received by the fans. When we announced our partnership with Gulf Oil International last July, fans immediately started sharing their ideas about what a Golf-painted McLaren Formula 1 car might look like. We didn’t ask them to, they just did it. That really highlights how much this paint job has caught the public imagination. “
Great expectations
With the legendary golf colors, the MCL35M follows the wheel tracks of the McLaren F1 GTR, the Ford GT40 and the Porsche 917K – just a few of the racing machines that have shaped the public’s love of golf, along with the ‘King of Cool’ Steve McQueen, the latter drove in the film Le Mans. With this story, a weight of expectation and responsibility rests on the shoulders of those tasked with designing the latest incarnation of paintwork. “As with any paint job, you want to make sure it’s a well-informed and well-executed design,” explains Ed. “It takes a lot of research and care to achieve this: you try to take into account the full story and understand the wants of key stakeholders.
“There’s a lot to be done on a paint job like this, but it’s important that you don’t get stuck on the order of its importance or you won’t produce anything worthwhile. You cannot let its meaning take the front of your mind all the time, you have to be brave. That’s exactly what this paintwork is while respecting its heritage and cultural standing. It’s a bold advancement of what went before. “
“We took on the baton and reinvented the golf livery for today’s audience,” says Louise. “I think I speak for everyone on the team when I say we are honored to have this opportunity and we understand that we are only the stewards of two well-known brands, McLaren and Gulf, and It’s our turn to bring them to life on the racetrack. “
“The golf colors were first used in a racing car in 1967 and were ahead of their time,” added Mike Jones, CEO of Gulf Oil International. “We’re excited about this latest, modern take on these famous colors. It’s absolutely breathtaking. We can’t wait to see this unique paint job on the streets of Monaco at the most spectacular F1 event of the year. “
Style and substance
One of the biggest challenges for an F1 team is to develop a new car every year. But it’s not just about designing everything you want, it has to be delivered within a number of constraints such as budget, time, resources, and regulations, and the same goes for designing a paint job for an F1 car. It’s as much science as art. “It just can’t look good,” says Ed. “It has to work and deliver in many different ways.
“We worked very closely with the Aero Finishing and Branding teams to optimize how we applied the paint to the car. There are areas of the car that we just can’t touch from a performance standpoint that may be due to a number of factors such as: B. the aerodynamic sensitivity or the minimization of the weight. “
“Gulf is obviously the star of the show, but this paint job doesn’t just meet your needs. It has to meet the needs of all of our partners who are contractually entitled to their logo in a specific location and in a specific size of the car. This shapes the design and how it will look on the track and on TV. It can’t just look good on a piece of paper or a computer screen. “
“Costs also play a role, especially this year with the introduction of the budget cap,” reveals Louise. “What it means is that there aren’t a lot of spares like front wings and rear wing elements lying around that we can brand, which obviously limited the number of tests we could do when it came to applying the paint and moving up the game in terms of execution of the design. “
Split strategy
The parallels between the design of an F1 car and the paint job don’t just stop at the constraints within which they must be delivered. At nine months, the lead time for that Golf livery wasn’t far from the time it typically takes the team to design and build a new F1 car from start to finish. “We thought about this paint job almost immediately after we announced our partnership with Gulf Oil International,” says Louise.
“The idea was born in August and in September we had the first round of visuals and designs ready. Once we presented the overall concept [McLaren Racing CEO] Zak Brown, the Executive Leadership Team, and Gulf, and it was approved. Then we started working on all the other elements that are part of the painting, such as: B. the driver’s overall, the team kit and the merchandise range. When Ed responded, the aero finishes and branding teams did a lot of work to further educate the design. For example, test things like vinyl paints to see how they would look on the car in different lights and settings. “
“It wasn’t until the beginning of February that the colors and design were finalized,” adds Ed. “I think it’s also important to remember that we developed two designs. One is more sensitive to the legacy of golf colors while the other is really against convention and what the motorsport community would expect from a golf paint job. However, when we got back to the idea of being stewards of the brand, we went for the former: we were aware of the fact that we had to deliver something that met the audience’s expectations rather than just tearing up the rulebook. There’s a clear nod to heritage in the final design, but there’s real modernity too.”
Brave moves
“As for the colors themselves, the orange you see is not papaya, but fluro orange.” says Ed. “It’s the same fluro orange as the McLaren F1 GTR, which finished second in the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans. In this way, the design connects with the past, but also for aesthetic reasons. If you put the fluro orange next to the Gulf Racing blue, it really bounces towards you – more than if we had used papaya. “
There is also science behind it. Due to an optical phenomenon known as equiluminance, Gulf Racing colors look like they are moving even when the car is not driving. Equiluminant colors differ in hue, but not in lightness. When paired with each other, it is difficult for the human eye to locate or determine the position of the colors. This gives the impression that the colors are vibrating or floating – and this is why the golf finish has a sense of energy and movement when it is stationary.
“Before this project was even on our radar in 2019, we actually tested the Fluro-Orange on the car during an F1 tire test at Paul Ricard,” says Louise. “We saw the test as an opportunity to examine the use of the color and to further our understanding of it. Most importantly, this involved doing an on-camera color test to make sure what you see on TV is an accurate representation of the color of the car. While I’m confident that it will really get noticed on TV, I can’t relax until the car rolls out of the garage and onto the Monaco track.
“I got goosebumps when I first saw the finished paint job on the actual car. That might sound a bit strange considering we design a new F1 livery every year and have been working on that design for nine months, but I think it’s one of the biggest and best things we’ve done as a team in four years I was at McLaren. There’s a tremendous sense of pride, but also a great anticipation of the fans’ reaction. “
“You never know exactly how a design is going to end up,” admits Ed. “There’s almost a kind of fear associated with it, especially when you’ve tried to be brave and take a step forward. But fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s something you try to hug, and it usually means what you’re working on, what’s important to you. It all takes to be brave and that is exactly what this design is. “
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