Rating & Ranking 2025 F1 Liveries!

Unlike last year, we have all 10 liveries to rate after one single launch day!

F1 75 Live event, which enabled (or rather forced) it, was okay.

There were moments where I thought "am I watching a concert or an F1 event?" but overall, it was alright... I'd like to think it was okay, because I spent 2 hours watching the whole thing.

If I had been in charge and in totla control, I would have allowed much less time for music and more time with drivers, TPs and the cars, but I guess they had some good reasons to make it how it was.

So it's this time of the year again!

If you want to compare my ratings for this year's liveries to last year's, here's my blog post from 2024 where I did the same with the F1 liveries from last season.

P10: ALPINE (1/10)

2024: P7 (5/10)

WTF??

If they wanted the BWT pink and the Alpine blue to co-exist in such a proportion to each other on the whole car, they should have made the whole livery asymmetrical to make it make sense when looked at from either side.

Sean Bull's work very rarely disappoints me, and this is one of the few that do.

P9: HAAS (1/10)

2024: P10 (1/10)

Last year, I thought they should have just kept the 2023 livery.

This year, they've managed to make their livery even worse!

The nose, when looked at from the front of the car, looks like it has a big white sock on and it's super ugly.

The white on the sidepods is working very well with their rounded shape to make the whole car look heavy and slow.

P19 and P20 would fit this livery quite nicely.

I've wondered for some years if Haas could ever go back to its older visual identity with its neat use of gray.

The VF-20 from the 2020 season truly was a beautiful formula car.

P8: ASTON MARTIN (4/10)

2024: P1 (10/10)

Why, Aston Martin, why?!

You really didn't need to change anything! 😭

Last year's AMR24, despite its weight-saving effort, was one of the most elegant, beautiful cars on the grid.

I understand the need and desire for more weight saving, but... it's a real shame.

It's such a downgrade from last year in terms of the livery, so I really hope its on-track performance is an upgrade.

P7: FERRARI (4/10)

2024: P4 (8/10)

It's not the livery designers' fault that Ferrari has a big title sponsor, so I do feel bad about giving it a 4 out of 10, but it's a 4 nonetheless.

I did think, for some time, that it could be like a 6, because Ferrari has had decent liveries for the last few years.

But no, I can't give it a 6.

What bothers me particularly is the thick white belt on the engine cover being cut bluntly due to the non-painted area between the sidepods and the engine cover, although it could be very little of an issue when the car is on track.

As a fan of the livery of Ferrari's 2016 challenger SF16-H, I had been hoping Ferrari would one day go back to red/white liveries.

It came true with the SF-25, but it didn't give me the sense of satisfaction that I expected.

I'm beginning to think I could never truly be happy with Ferrari's liveries unless they ditch the matte paint to go back to gloss, and they replace the diagonal belt with horizontal separation of red and white.

Morio, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

P6: MERCEDES (5/10)

2024: P2 (9/10)

What a disappointing downgrade from last year's nearly perfect livery!

They had an issue last year where people didn't see the Petronas logo on the side and Petronas green at the same time when the camera was looking at the car from right or left, so they had to add some green bit to the sidepods during the season.

They made sure they wouldn't have the same problem by changing the way the green stripes run from the front nose towards the rear, and by doing so, they naturally had to change the way to separate silver and black on the sidepods, which I think is one of the reasons it lost the elegance of last year's livery.

Another problem is that they replaced the Ineos red on the airbox with silver.

Last year's livery achieved such a level of elegance by having the only major silver area running straight from the nose towards the upperside of the sidepods with no sudden change of direction.

This year though, they not only disturbed the flow of the main silver element, but also added another big silver area on the airbox, not even with a similar width of length.

I think that destroyed the overall balance.

P5: RACING BULLS (6/10)

2024: P9 (2/10)

Without all the blue bits, this could have been the best livery on the grid!

This livery reminds us of the "white bull" that Red Bull ran at the 2021 Turkish GP, which was loved by many people, including me.

If Racing Bulls got rid of the blue stuff, particularly the little bulls charging from the rear end towards the front, and changed the color of the blue Visa logo on the sidepods to red or black, then this livery would score 10 out of 10 without a doubt.

I thought about giving it a 5, but I like what they're trying to achieve, so I'll give it a 6... at least for now.

P4: McLAREN (6/10)

2024: P5 (7/10)

Not too bad, but just 2 things.

One is the newly added blue areas around the rear view mirrors (although not nearly as horrendous as the blue used in 2022/2023).

The other is how much more easily they ended the orange – sorry, I meant papaya – area between the nose and the halo, compared to last year.

These bother me, not terribly but definitely.

I liked how they diagonally cut the rear end of the papaya area on the nose to match it with the theme throughout the whole car last year, so it's a shame that we lost it.

I gave the MCL38 a 7, but it's a 6 for its successor.

P3: WILLIAMS (7/10)

2024: P6 (6/10)

This bright blue must come from their new title sponsor, Atlassian.

It's not a shade of blue I like, but I like how gradually they introduce it from the navy blue at the front without doing anything stupid or unnecessary.

Maybe this thin white stripe doesn't have to be there either?

Anyways, it's an okay livery.

I can't help finding this shade of blue really cheap, though.

Remember the W-shaped layered-ish design Williams has used for 3 years since 2022?

If this Atlassian blue had been used as one of the shades, then it may not have bothered me this much.

Of course, it's entirely possible that they couldn't make it happen due to some sponsorship-related constraint.

P2: RED BULL (9/10)

2024: P3 (9/10)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'd give it a 10 if they replaced the white Oracle logo on the sidepods with a red Red Bull, like the older cars with this theme of livery... although I don't want them to lose their title sponsor, of course 😁

There is no reason for them to change this livery.

I hope they keep ignoring all the noise from some fans calling for a new livery from Red Bull and keep using what they've used for the last 9 years, because it'd be such a shame if they drop this classic livery on a whim.

P1: STAKE SAUBER (10/10)

2024: P8 (4/10)

I thought it was an 8 or 9 at the time of the reveal, but I've come to love it more and more.

Now I give it a 10 out of 10! 👏

This sense of cleanness created by one, big undisturbed flow of a color over another, I think, is precisely what Mercedes lost this year.

On the stage at F1 75 Live, the rear edge of the wrap was so visible on the engine cover and it looked quite disturbing, but I love what this livery tries to achieve and, as long as it's applied to the car neatly enough, I think it should work.

So, please, Sauber, make it work.

Stake Sauber placed 8th last year with 4 points, so they've made a big jump.

Congratulations!

There is no actual prize though.