Livery Watch 2026 Special Editions: Monaco GP
And now for a Livery Watch 2026 post that is actually on time! It's Monaco race week and as is starting to become a bit of a norm, I have more one-off liveries to chat about.
Without further ado, lets get into it!
McLaren - 1000th Grand Prix livery
This season McLaren are set to become only the second team in F1 history to contest 1000 Grand Prix, after Ferrari celebrated their 1000th race at the Tuscan GP in 2020 (still one of the F1 liveries of all time btw). McLaren's 1000th race celebrations were originally scheduled for Miami, but after the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs, that goalpost has since moved to this weekends race in Monaco.
This livery will be ran over the Monaco and Barcalona-Catalunya Grand Prix (I can only assume the team's double DNS in China has further added to the shifting milestone), and features a geometric design of metallic papaya orange and black. As well as the large 1000 on the side, the livery features the chassis number, the date of the upcoming Monaco GP, and the years of McLaren's various milestones across their F1 History - from their first race, first win, and their championship winning seasons.
As McLaren ran a vintage style livery at last year's Monaco race, I actually don't mind the shift in design to something that feels very modern. I think making the orange segments metallic is a fantastic design touch and will look beautiful against the black sections (I don't know if it's a nod to their famous chrome livery, or just for fun, but I am not immune to some shiny things).
I am somewhat biased as orange is my favourite colour, but I think this livery is a good blending of the team's current visual identity with the sentimentality of McLaren's 1000th race. I am very much looking forward to seeing what the car looks like on track!
EDIT (4.6.26): Having seen the IRL car at McLaren's 1000th GP photocall during the Thursday of the Monaco GP, I can confirm that the metallic orange looks so much better in real life that I have to upgrade my rating to a 9/10.
Aston Martin - 'From Rock to Racetrack' livery
Created in collaboration with the team's partner Maaden, Aston Martin's one off livery for Monaco is inspired by the transformation of metals and minerals to high-performance engineering (I did take that straight from the press release).'
It features two sections on the nosecone and engine cover that has been covered in a iridescent wrap that is designed to change colour depending on where you view it from, so in theory the car should change colour as it moves around the Monaco circuit.
This kind of effect is what I wanted Racing Bulls' holographic livery to be like last year, so I have to admit my expectations are pretty high for how it's going to look on track. Although I would have liked to see the nosecone be fully wrapped, instead of the empty black section in the middle where the driver number and some sponsor logos are. It does detract from the overall look, especially if the colour shift is meant to be as striking as claimed on the Aston Martin website.
This definitely feels like the most different from their core livery AM have ever done, so I have to applaud the effort even if we can't see the full effect just yet. (I may update this section of the write-up post-race)
So for now, I can only feel justified in giving it an 6/10
Audi - Tazio Nuvolari tribute livery
(We're gonna have to get through some wordy context before I chat about the actual livery, please bear with me. Also sorry the car picture is disjointed in the middle, I had to take two pictures from Audi's instagram and smush them together)
Debuting their maiden one-off livery late by Livery Watch standards (Audi have only just posted about their Monaco GP livery on the Thursday press day of the Monaco GP), I had to do a surprising amount of digging to find out just what this yellow-accented livery is all about. And lo and behold it's to promote the new Audi Nuvolari supercar.
The car and Audi livery are in tribute to Italian racing driver Tazio Nuvolari, who competed in pre-F1 era Grand Prix racing as well as Motorbike racing and the 24 Hours of Le Mans - which he won in 1933. He also won the Monaco Grand Prix in 1932, which I'm assuming is why the F1 livery and road car named after him have been unveiled this weekend.
Nuvolari (also known as il Mantovano Volante/the Flying Mantuan) spent most of his racing career driving for Alfa Romeo, before switching to race for Auto Union - a German car company that was an amalgamation of four different German car manufactures that eventually evolved into the single Audi company that exists today - and he famously contested every race he drove in wearing a bright yellow jumper. Tazio won the 1938 Italian and Donnington Grand Prix and the 1939 Belgrade Grand Prix for Auto Union, which is why Audi have swapped almost all their neon red accents on the R26 and the driver overalls to a bright sunshine yellow.
...Now all that preamble is done and dusted, I do quite like the car. The silver/black/yellow colour palette is very fun and much like Racing Bulls' livery from Miami it's a very easy combination to get right. Although I am somewhat annoyed that Audi have literally cut and pasted the red on their car for yellow, but a part of me wonders if it's due to the back-to-back race with Barcelona-Catalunya next week, and it's to make the transition back to the team's core livery as seamless as possible.
Overall it does look really nice, and I enjoy the sentimentality behind it even if it is just to flog a limited edition supercar (for anyone into their racing history, it's definitely worth doing an internet deep dive on Tazio - he had quite the eventful racing career!)
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