Formula One

McLaren and Williams to run special liveries for the upcoming F1 races

Special liveries for Williams and McLaren mean that they will appear different in Singapore
Photo by XPB / Icon Sport

Another race, another special livery revealed for some Formula 1 teams! For the Singapore Grand Prix, two of them will run with new colours, both related to sponsorship reasons.

Gulf colours for Williams

Gulf is one of the largest oil corporations globally and it is often cited as one of the oldest sponsors in motor racing. In fact, some of the cars from Ford’s sports car department earned legendary victories at Le Mans during the late 1960’s with Gulf’s distinctive light blue and orange liveries. After the demise of the team in subsequent years, it featured on the sports cars of Porsche.

The brand gained notoriety in the early years of the next decade, as it featured prominently on the car of Michael Delaney, Steve McQueen’s character in the Le Mans film. After a few year of financial woes, Gulf returned to motorsport through Aston Martin and it’s Le Mans efforts, as well as McLaren’s F1 team, which ran a special Gulf livery in the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix.

For 2023, Gulf joined Williams and part of the agreement was a dedicated livery for the races at Singapore, Japan and Qatar. Four versions were released in May and after a public vote, it was decided that the one named “Bolder than Bold” would be the one that would be raced.


This will be the second special livery used by Williams this season. The first was in the British Grand Prix, where the team celebrated its 800th event with a livery that featured the Union Jack on the engine cover.

A third special livery for McLaren

For the third time in 2023, McLaren has unveiled a different livery to race with. In addition to its normal one, the team from Woking raced in Monaco and Spain with an orange, white and blue livery in tribute to its Triple Crown success. It then ran a livery with plenty of chrome in Silverstone, in a nod to its last championship success in 2008. Both were part of its 6oth anniversary celebrations.

This time, the reason behind the special colours is its sponsorship deal with OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange spot. The special colours will be in use for the Singapore and Japanese Grands Prix, the next two races in the calendar. The same deal took place last year, although the alterations were much more subtle then, with a few decals and a bit of pink integrated to the normal livery.

As for this season’s livery, the changes are much more prominent, as the orange sidepods will mainly be black and feature a big OKX logo. The cars of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will also have no light blue details, as they do when the standard livery is used.

Special liveries of course are no rare occurrence in Formula 1, especially for the past few years. You can read about some of the best ones in this feature, which also includes the time when McLaren raced in Gulf colours.


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