Updated: 2022 F1 car liveries | McLaren changes it up for Abu Dhabi | GRR

The 2021 season was a monster, with twists and turns to bring unalloyed joy to the producers of Drive to Survive and, at the end, a new world champion in Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The drama came not just as a result of talent but because the gap between Mercedes and Red Bull, and indeed the whole field (with the exception of Haas) shrank.

The 2022 season brings with it the biggest regulation change since the start of the 2014 season, so keeping track of the new cars could not be more important. 

McLaren reveals final special livery for Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Updated: Wednesday 16^th November 2022 at 17:25. McLaren has revealed one final special edition livery for the final F1 race of the 2022 season. This one plays with the current branding, but adds an artistic flair, with some black patterns over the orange and blue of the sidepod. The balance of the two colours has also slightly changed. The blue is now a mixture of white, green, yellow and blue all coloured into the intricately drawn pattern.

The livery is part of McLaren’s collaboration with sponsor Vuse and also sees the redesign of the team’s logo, detaching the second half of the V into an apostrophe shape. The new design is the brainchild of Lebanese artist Anna Tangles and will run on both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo's cars throughout the Abu Dhabi weekend.

McLaren had a special livery for last season’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, again in collaboration with Vuse, which featured a multicoloured pattern running along the sidepod.

McLaren to run special livery in Singapore and Japan

Updated: Wednesday 28th September 2022 at 11:10. McLaren has revealed a tweaked livery for the Singapore and Japanese Grands Prix, which comes complete with pink flashes and an x-ray body cover.

The new livery, as part of its partnership with cryptocurrency firm OKX, sees the firm’s logo run in pink on the rear wing and in black on the sidepods. There will be pink flashes down the sidepod, engine cover, air intake and nose and several sections displaying detailed imagery of the engine and hybrid systems below.

The livery will be used on both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo’s cars through the Japanese and Singaporean rounds and will be made available to players on the F1 22 game.

Ferrari reveals special Monza F1 livery

Updated Wednesday 7^th September 2022 at 15:00. Ferrari has unveiled its special edition livery for the Italian Grand Prix, celebrating the 75^th anniversary of the company.The new livery for the F1-75 features yellow and black sections on the front wing, rear wing endplates and the engine cover sharkfin. There’s also the word Ferrari written in yellow across the main plane of the rear wing and a flash across the halo.The yellow colour comes from the early days of Scuderia Ferrari, when Enzo included it in his colour-scheme as the colour of Maranello. According to the team the colour was removed when the International Association of Recognised Automobile Clubs set red as the official colour of Italy. In those pre-war days all Grand Prix cars raced in their national colours.

Updated 17:00 Thursday 9th June 2022. Alfa Romeo has added a splash of Italian flare to its colour scheme for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. The rear of the car has been painted Montreal Green to celebrate the arrival of the long-awaited Alfa Romeo Tonale SUV in Europe, and will remain on both cars for the duration of the weekend. It also just so happens that the green, white and red colours mirror the Italian flag.

Updated 10:00 Friday 6^th May 2022. Mercedes has shown a bright and boisterous rear wing design that it’ll run for the Miami Grand Prix. Applied to both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s wings for the duration of the Miami weekend, the new look comes as part of a collaboration between Mercedes, its partner FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and artist Mad Dog Jones. The designs feature in two NFT (Non Fungible Token) digital artworks, which will be auctioned for charity alongside the physical rear wings after the race weekend on the FTX marketplace, raising money for Ignite, the joint charitable venture between Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton’s ‘Mission44’, which aims to support inclusion and greater diversity in motorsport.

Updated March 17 10.20am: McLaren has updated its 2022 F1 livery on the MCL36 again after a major partnership was announced with Alphabet’s operating system Android.

The change reveals the reason for the new black airbox elements that were shown at the Bahrain pre-season test. At the test that was taken up by an ad for the McLaren Artura. This, it turns out, was a placeholder, ready for the Android logo to appear on the car.

There is an extra change with the Android partnership too, as McLaren becomes the second team to make use of its wheel covers for colour addition. Alfa Romeo added red and white to its wheel covers and now the Android colours of red, blue, yellow and green adorn the covers.

Update: Which is your favourite 2022 F1 car livery?

Updated 12:30 Wednesday 2^nd March 2022. After months of wondering what real 2022 F1 cars would look like, every team has now unveiled its new machines. With that in mind, we were wondering: which is the best 2022 F1 livery? The cars will change massively before the first race in Bahrain, but the liveries will stay the same, so now’s the time to say which one you like the most.

Update: Mercedes unveils radical W13 redesign

Updated 09:30 Thursday 10^th March 2022. Mercedes debuted a radical redesign for its W13, in just the car’s second outing in public. Rather than just a redesign of smaller aero elements of wing design, the W13 has been shorn of almost all of its sidepods.

Rules on chassis homologation and crash testing are strict, which is why such a large revision in season is uncommon in F1, but the W13 now looks like Mercedes has taken the minimal sidepod concept from Williams and pushed it to the next level.

Where normally you would find a shoulder for the sidepod and air intake, the W13 now continues nearly flush to the engine cover, with just a vestigial fin remaining holding some flow conditioning aids and the mirrors.

Update: Haas shows third 2022 livery

Updated 09:25 Thursday 10^th February 2022. Haas has a new livery, for the third time already in 2022, having ditched its Russian flag-based colour scheme after splitting with former title sponsor UralKali and driver Nikita Mazepin.

While the team still retains some blue in its kit and pit garages, thanks to sponsor 1&1, the car now features only white, red and black, with UralKali’s logos replaced with those of owner Gene Haas’s Haas Automation tool company.

The VF-22 was seen in its new colours for the first time in testing at Bahrain with reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi at the wheel. Fittipaldi will drive today before season drivers Mick Schumacher and new re-signing Kevin Magnussen take over for the rest of the test.

Update: McLaren tweaks 2022 livery

Updated 11:00 Wednesday 9^th March 2022. Just before the start of F1’s only official test of 2022 in Bahrain, McLaren revealed a tweaked livery for its MCL36.

The car now features more black and less of McLaren’s traditional Papaya Orange thanks to the addition of an advert for McLaren’s hybrid road car, the Artura.

The new advertising appears at the top of the MCL36’s airbox and is not the only change to the livery. Also gone is the blue section that appeared on the end fence of the McLaren MCL36’s rear wing.

The changes, seen during a McLaren filming day before the test, also included the removal of major sponsor Velo with ‘A Better Tomorrow’ replacing it on both sidepod and front wing endfence. This is part of the team’s deal with British American Tobacco, which owns both brands.

Also appearing for the first time on the McLaren MCL36 was a small fin on the floor, presumably to help with the flow of air around the car’s strongly sculpted sidepods.

It’s not known if the livery change will be permanent or just for Bahrain, given the fact that McLaren group is majority owned by Mumtalakat Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain.

Update: Alfa Romeo reveals C42 livery

Updated 10:50 Monday 28^th February 2022. Alfa Romeo has unveiled its 2022 C42 F1 car in full after F1’s Barcelona shakedown test finished. The C42 is the final 2022 F1 car and livery to be launched, completing the grid of brand-new-for-2022 cars.

While the C42 had already been seen in testing it was in a camouflaged livery, designed to stop viewers from being able to clearly make out details. Now we can see that, as expected, the C42 shares a lot of details with engine-supplier Ferrari.

The livery is a change from the 2021 car, with a lot more red, and Alfa Romeo now displayed in script on the engine cover. The team is also the first to add colour to the new-for-2022 wheel covers.

The car will make its full, liveried debut in the second F1 test at Bahrain next month.

Update: Haas sports revised livery

Updated 09:00 Friday 25^th February 2022. Haas revealed its second livery of the 2022 F1 season, a year which has yet to get underway, at the shakedown test in Barcelona. The new livery removes all mentions of the team’s major sponsor UralKali, the Russian chemical giant part-owned by the father of driver Nikita Mazepin.

The decision follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to Russian news agency TASS Mazepin’s father Dmitry was one of a number of Russian businessmen who met with with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. This is the first major consequence of Russia’s actions in Ukraine that F1 has seen and follows calls from several drivers for the Russian Grand Prix to be scrapped amid the ongoing fighting. Four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel even went as far as to say he would not be going to Russia should the Grand Prix go ahead.

Haas’ new livery simply removes all mention of UralKali and the colours of the Russian flag that had been the major theme of the scheme. The colours have been replaced with black for now and all the team’s support vehicles are now purely white with the red Haas logo.

Update: Real Red Bull RB18 hits the track

Updated 10:00 Wednesday 23^rd February 2022. The real Red Bull RB18 has finally broken cover on day one of the first official F1 test of 2022. The livery for Red Bull’s 2022 F1 car had been revealed in an online stream earlier in the month, but it was immediately obvious that the car underneath the now familiar Red Bull livery was just one of the F1 exhibition cars from the 2021 reveal. Now the real RB18 has been seen for the first time on track in the hands of new champion Max Verstappen at Catalunya. Again the RB18 features another interpretation of F1’s new rules, with some aggressively shaped sidepods and a nose that dips down to the second element of the front wing.

Update: McLaren MCL36 hits the track

Updated 12:00 Tuesday 22^nd February 2022. A week and a half after McLaren launched its MCL36, the car has taken to the track for the very first time as part of a filming day ahead of the first F1 pre-season test in Barcelona. No, sadly none of the team’s pictures gives a clear look at the rear end, but to see another all-new machine out on track, the only other being the Haas VF-22, is very exciting. McLaren even published an onboard video, too. We absolutely cannot wait for the test to get going and see more of these new-breed cars in action.

Update: Alpine A522 unveiled with two liveries

Updated 18:00 Monday 21^st February 2022. The Alpine A522 has been unveiled, resplendent in the familiar Alpine blue with hints of BWT pink, the team’s new title sponsor. In a twist, however, the team showed a reversed livery, with pink the dominant colour, and announced its intention to race in those colours for the first two weekends of the 2022 F1 season. No doubt Alpine’s new Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer will be having flashbacks to his time managing Racing Point and the infamous 2020 ‘Pink Mercedes’. Like many of the other 2022 F1 cars revealed so far, there are similarities to the FIA show car but some unique elements, including eight distinct vertical vents on the engine cover and nine more vents across the top of the sidepod. If Alpine’s car from 2021 looked a little bloated, the A522 is much more streamlined.

Real Haas VF22 revealed in testing

Updated 21st February 11:15. The real Haas VF22 has been revealed as the team undertakes a filming day in Barcelona ahead of the first official F1 test of the season. The car, which Mick Schumacher and his team-mate will race in 2022, is very different from the renders revealed a few weeks ago. 

Wearing roughly the same livery as last season, the new version of the VF22 has a wider nose and some intriguing winglets on the sidepod. The sidepods are longer and less sculpted than some of the other team's designs.

Update: Mercedes launches F1 W13

Updated 09:40 Friday 18^th February 2022. Mercedes has unveiled its W13 2022 F1 car, returning to a silver-dominated livery for the first time since 2019.

After missing out on the drivers’ title in 2021 for the first time since F1 went hybrid in 2014, this is the machine that Toto Wolff and his crew hope will put Lewis Hamilton, or new recruit George Russell, back at the top.

The Mercedes W13 was revealed in an online stream with both driers, and features a new silver over black livery, with pronounced exposure for key sponsor Petronas and part-owner Ineos.

Design-wise it seems to be a mix of several ideas seen on other cars, with incredibly small sidepods similar to the Williams concept, but a long, sloped nose more in the Ferrari vein. That said a lot of the car looked quite simple, so we imagine it will look quite different come testing.

Update: Ferrari’s 2022 F1-75 F1 car revealed

Updated 13:30 Thursday 17^th February 2022. Ferrari has unveiled its F1-75, the car it hopes will propel Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. to the front of the grid, and put Ferrari in contention for the Formula 1 World Championship for the first time since 2019.

Unveiled in an online launch with Ferrari F1 Team Principle Mattia Binnotto, Leclerc and Sainz, the new car is resplendent in Ferrari’s traditional red colours, but the team has returned to using black elements as part of its colour-scheme for the first time in several seasons.

Also returning to the car is sponsor Santander, which supported Ferrari while Spaniard Fernando Alonso drove for the team. Logos from Ferrari’s long-time partner Phillip Morris and its Mission Winnow brand are noticeably missing.

Just like with several 2022 F1 cars launched so far, the Ferrari F1-75 showcases some variations in concept for the 2022 regulations. These include some thin but strongly swept air intakes, a very pointed nose and some extraordinarily sculpted sidepods.

Update: Williams FW44 revealed in full

Updated 16:35 Tuesday 15^th February 2022. The real Williams FW44 was revealed during a shakedown test at Silverstone following a livery reveal earlier in the day. Only a pair of images are available but they show a design that looks quite different to the other cars that have been revealed. With a rounded nose and very small sidepods.

Update: Williams FW44 2022 F1 car unveiled

Updated 13:30 Tuesday 15^th February 2022. Williams has revealed its latest F1 car, the FW44, in an online launch featuring team boss Jost Capito and drivers Nicholas Latifi and Alex Albon. The team hopes the FW44 will be the car to continue its rise up the grid following the takeover by Dorilton Capital in 2020.

With George Russell departing for Mercedes in 2022, Latifi will be partnered by Red Bull refugee Albon in the FW44, which sports a smart new livery. In a departure from its previous white and blue liveries, and with Duracell joining as a new sponsor, the FW44 is swathed with shades of blue and red for the first time.

Update: AlphaTauri AT03 revealed

Updated Monday 14^th February 2022. AlphaTauri has released the first images of its AT03 Formula 1 car, which Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda will drive in 2022. The images show a car that is in part new and in part significantly based on Formula 1’s own renderings.

While this car will therefore change before the first test later this month, there are some interesting design features of note, including sidepods that differ heavily from all three of the previously released designs. The car, in a slightly altered version of AlphaTauri’s standard blue-and-white livery, also does not feature Honda branding, after the manufacturer left F1 at the end of 2021, but does have the logos of the Honda Racing Corporation, which will continue to supply engines and looks after all Honda’s motorsport activities.

Update: McLaren reveals MCL36 2022 F1 car

Updated 19:35 Friday 11^th February 2022. After an impressive 2022, which saw the team take its first victory since 2012 with Daniel Riccierdo and Lando Norris come very close to his first ever win in Sochi, this is the car McLaren hopes will propel it to at least third in the championship in 2022.

Launched in an online launch at the team’s HQ in Woking, alognside debuts for the new IndyCar, Extreme E and esports teams’ various cars and liveries, the MCL36. The car was the second fully-formed 2022 car to be revealed, following the Aston Martin AMR22. Red Bull and Haas have revealed cars, but they have largely been liveries on the F1 concept car.

You can see a full gallery of the MCL36 here.

Update: Aston Martin AMR22 unveiled

Updated Thursday 10^th February 2022. Aston Martin became the first team to reveal a proper 2022 F1 car as it unveiled its new AMR22. The car which Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll will race in the upcoming season is the first true ’22 car we’ve seen, despite being the third livery to be revealed.

Aston Martin promised earlier in the day that the reveal would be of a full car, and when images were release on social media it proved to be the first to differ from Formula 1’s own dummy designs revealed last year. Changes include some significant slashes to the sidepods and a squared-off nose.

Red Bull RB18 launched

Updated 9th February 16:45 Red Bull has launched its challenger for the 2022 F1 season: the RB18. The new car will be the machine that Max Verstappen uses to defend his first F1 crown, and the first to wear the number one since Sebastien Vettel used it in 2014.

Like the Haas the car is still very much a work in progress, with changes expected to come before the first pre-season test later this month, but there are already noticeable differences to the American machine, including the lack of raised nose.

Update: Haas VF-22 unveiled

Updated 13:00 Friday 4^th February 2022. Haas has given us our first look not only at a F1 challenger for 2022, but our very first look at what a competing 2022 Formula 1 car looks like, after months of enduring livery mock-ups on the ‘standard’ FIA buck. This is the Haas VF-22.

The team famously devoted next to no development power to its 2021 car, which was the token backmarker in every race last year, in order to focus on shaping the ground-up new VF-22 under the new rules. As such, there are tentative high hopes for this year’s Haas.

Update: Red Bull RB18 launch date announced

Updated 11:45 Thursday 3^rd February 2022. The Red Bull RB18 launch date has been set: Wednesday 9^th February 2022. The car that newly-crowned champion Max Verstappen hopes will bring him a second title, and one in which Sergio Perez will no doubt hope to win more than once race with as he did in the RB16B in 2021, will be revealed nine days ahead of the Mercedes-AMG W13.

Update: Alfa Romeo sets a date and Ferrari names its car

Updated 13:02 Wednesday 2^nd February 2022. The final countdown to the reveals of this season’s F1 cars is properly on now, as we slip from January into February, with the latest crumbs of information coming to us from Italy.

Alfa Romeo has set a month-long countdown going today, announcing a very late reveal for its C42 of 08:00 GMT on 27^th Feb. Yes, that puts the official unveiling of the car a few days after the initial pre-testing sessions at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on 23^rd-25^th February. 

Ferrari has announced that its 2022 challenger would be called F1-75, prompting questions about the Scuderia’s car naming consistency. Indeed, we’ve now gone from SF71H to SF90, to SF1000 to SF21 and now F1-75. Regardless, the marque remains on track for the F1-75’s reveal on 17^th February at a to-be-specified venue. There are high hopes for Ferrari as a title challenger this year with these new regulations.

Update: AlphaTauri and Alpine announce new car reveal dates

Updated 13:45 Wednesday 26^th January 2022. AlphaTauri and Alpine, two of the strongest midfield teams in the 2021 F1 season, have announced the launch dates for their 2022 cars.

AlphaTauri announced that its AT03 car will be revealed on 14^th February, but hasn’t yet announced more details of the unveiling. The new car will again be driven by Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda in 2022.

The Alpine team, which endured an up and down season in 2021, including Esteban Ocon’s first ever race win, will reveal its A522 on 21^st February, two days before the first pre-season test of 2022, which starts on 23^rd February. No more details about the launch have been revealed.

Update: Mercedes W13 launch date announced

Updated 11:35 Tuesday 18^th January 2022. Mercedes-AMG has announced it will reveal its all-new for '22 F1 car, the W13, on 18^th February. The event will take place at Silverstone ahead of an initial shakedown test and will be streamed digitally. No more details of the new car have been revealed, but Mercedes has already become the first F1 team to publically fire up its 2022 F1 car. 

Update: McLaren MCL36 launch date announced

Updated 16:00 Monday 17^th January 2022. McLaren has announced it will host the launch of its 2022 F1 car, the McLaren MCL36, on Friday 11^th February 2022, livestreaming across its social media channels and on Sky Sports F1. There will also be appearances from the Arrow McLaren SP IndyCar, McLaren Extreme E and McLaren Shadow esports teams.

Update: Ferrari F1 car launch date announced

Updated 09:30 Monday 17^th January 2022. It seems the rumours were true, as after speculation Ferrari had penned the 16^th, 17^th or 18^th of February as launch day for its 2022 F1 machine, Thursday 17^th has been confirmed with posts across Scuderia Ferrari’s social media channels. Ferrari finished third in the 2021 constructors’ standings behind Red Bull and Mercedes, a marked improvement over its sixth place finish in 2020, but without a single victory since 2019 there’s still a lot of pressure on Ferrari to improve and not just fight for wins but championships, too.

Update: Red Bull names new car RB18

Updated 15:30 Friday 14^th January 2022. Red Bull has revealed the name of its 2022 F1 challenger: the Red Bull RB18. Disclosed in an open invite to fans to join the launch event but without revealing the date itself, the name RB18 shows a jump, missing out RB17 entirely after the 2021 car was called RB16B. The ‘B’ reflected the fact that every '21 car was just an updated one from 2020 rather than an all-new design, an nomenclature also adopted by Williams with the FW43B and McLaren with the MCL35M. Reports suggest RB16B was an exception, and the team has decided to continue to mark the number of years it has been in the sport. Red Bull joined in 2005, taking over what had been Jaguar, hence RB18.

Update: Aston Martin announces 2022 F1 car reveal date

Updated 10:30 Friday 14^th January 2022. Aston Martin has become the first team to announce the date for its 2022 F1 car reveal. The Aston Martin AMR22 will be unveiled on Thursday 10^th February at the car manufacturers base in Gaydon. Both drivers, four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll, will be at the launch, joined by Aston Martin executive chairman Lawrence Stroll.

When are the new 2022 F1 cars being revealed?

Only Aston Martin has given a date for its 2022 car launch, while Mercedes has teased its W13 with a video of the first engine start-up. It is expected many of the first car and livery reveals will begin in mid-February, with one or two launches taking place at pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya from Wednesday 23^rd to Friday 25^th February.

What are the F1 2022 rule changes?

The exact changes are incredibly complicated, but, in short, the next-generation 2022 F1 cars still use hybrid-V6 powertrains but rely less on downforce and more on ground effect than the racers from 2021. The result, Formula 1 hopes, will be closer racing, as drivers have complained for years that overtaking is too difficult with cars highly sensitive to the wake of the car ahead.

• All cars will have ground effect floors, with two long channels running along their lengths, generating downforce but producing a smaller wake, and making them less sensitive to that of the car ahead.
• The front wing and endplates are simpler, with a four-element wing and single-element endplate.
• The rear wings are a new shape which should generate downforce but send more dirty air up and over the car behind. These wings still incorporate a Drag Reduction System (DRS), and will be connected to the car by a lower beam wing and two vertical swan neck supports.
• Bargeboards have been banned. 
• Standardised flat wheel covers have been introduced to stop teams developing wheel-cover aero devices and reduce outwash, where turbulent air is forced outwards from the wheels.
• Front wheel deflectors will be incorporated to limit aerodynamic outwash.
• The shaping of brake ducts for downforce gains has been limited.
• Wheels now measure 18-inches rather than 13-inches, meaning the Pirellis will now more closely resemble the lower-profile tyres of many road cars. The increase in size should make them less sensitive to temperature changes, therefore allowing drivers to push for longer and worry less about slides damaging the tyres.
• How the suspension connects to the wheels has been simplified, meaning components must mount directly to the wheel hub.
• A standard tyre pressure sensor will be fitted to all cars.
• Parts are divided into five categories, namely listed (a team must design and own all of the IP, like the chassis), standard supply components (designed by a designated supplier, like the tyre pressure sensor), transferrable (can be supplied from one team to another, like the gearbox), prescribed (built by teams to a set specification) and open source (free for teams to design to their own spec but all details must be made available to other teams).
• The fuel will change from having a 5.75 to a 10 per cent bio-component (E10) with a near-zero carbon footprint.
• The chassis must be able to absorb 48 and 15 per cent more energy respectively in front and rear impact tests. The sides of the chassis are stronger, too, while the nose is longer to further help dissipate energy in a crash. 
• The minimum car weight has risen from 752kg to 790kg.