By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief
AUSTIN, Texas – McLaren have revealed that they considering returning to its former papaya orange livery for the 2018 Formula One season.
The team ran the historic colors in their return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May in the 101st Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil. The venture was a in a partnership with Andretti Autosport and support from Honda, which brought global attention as two-time Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso elected to miss the Monaco Grand Prix and cross over to the crown jewel event of the Verizon IndyCar Series.
Zak Brown, executive director at McLaren, mentioned the fan reaction for the event was a massive success, but the opportunity to see that on the F1 car will come down to sponsors.
“We are starting to look at car designs now,” said Brown.
“I think the fans want us to go to papaya orange.
“When we did the IndyCar we had an overwhelming amount of ‘please make your F1 car like that’, so we are waiting on a few sponsor decisions which can also dictate what a car looks like. I wouldn’t rule it out.”
Despite the pending resolution with sponsors, Brown doesn’t believe a rebranding similar to that of Force India will take place, who changed their livery color to pink for sponsor BWT ahead of the 2017 season.
“We have all sorts of designs going on, but we need to see where we land on some of the sponsor activity and that will dictate a bit of that,” said Brown.
“We would like to keep some orange, we think it is part of our identity, but we are a commercial entity.
“Pink might be a bit extreme though.”
