Red Bull abandons F1 livery takeovers because of car weight concerns

Red Bull has had to abandon plans for fan-inspired livery takeovers at the Singapore and USA grands prix because of concerns about the extra weight of new paint schemes.

The Milton Keynes-based squad had invited its followers to come up with bespoke livery designs that would be run at the British, Singapore and USA races this season.

Winners would not only get to see their ideas realised on the actual RB20 cars but would also attend the races as special guests of the team.

The first design duly ran at Silverstone this year but, amid the growing reality of a super close fight with McLaren and Ferrari for the world championship, a change of plan has been made ahead of this weekend’s race in Singapore.

Autosport understands that, during the concept phase of creating the livery that was being planned for Singapore on a real car at the factory, it was found that the paint scheme added around 1kg of weight to the RB20.

While the performance difference is only worth around 0.03 seconds per lap, based on how close things are at the front of the grid the team concluded it could not risk compromising its championship efforts because of a marketing campaign.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

So ahead of the Singapore GP, the team has duly confirmed that the custom livery plan has had to be abandoned for now and it will be sticking with its regular colours for the remainder of the campaign.

A statement from the team said: “Unfortunately when we came to the testing phase of what some REBL CUSTMS designs could look like, in real life, on the RB20, we found the paint used to create these bespoke full car takeover liveries added unforeseen and undue weight to the bodywork of the RB20,” said a statement.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, any additional weight compromises performance and the team are continuing to prioritise making this car as competitive as possible for the remainder of the 2024 season.

“As a result, it is with a heavy heart that we must let you know the team has made the decision to not run the REBL CUSTMS liveries on the RB20 at the Singapore and United States GPs.”

F1 teams have faced battles over recent years trying to get their cars down to the minimum weight limit, with paint schemes being stripped back across the field to try to help.

But as revealed by Autosport earlier this year, talks are talking place among series bosses about trying to roll back on some of the excess black that has become common up and down the grid.

The FIA’s head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis said: “One issue is that cars have a bit too much naked carbon, obviously because of the weight of paint, so the cars have a bit too much black.

“There has also been a lot of work done by all teams to change the type of paint, or indeed a lot of it nowadays is extremely thin films, to keep the weight as low as possible.”