15 Iconic Racing Liveries and the Stories Behind Them

Gulf Oil, 1967–1975, the Wyer years

Powder blue and marigold. Few colors in racing are recognized faster. The deal started with two men: John Wyer, who ran the team, and Grady Davis, a Gulf Oil vice president who owned a GT40. Gulf backed Wyer's JW Automotive Engineering from 1967, and the Mirage M1 was the first car to wear the colors.

The GT40 made them famous. Pedro Rodriguez and Lucien Bianchi won Le Mans in 1968. A year later, the same chassis won again with Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver. Ickx started last after walking to his car in protest at the running start, then took the lead from Hans Herrmann's Porsche 908 on the final lap. In 1970 Wyer switched to the Porsche 917, and Steve McQueen's 1971 film Le Mans put the blue-and-orange 917 in front of everyone else. Gulf's last overall Le Mans win came in 1975, when Ickx and Derek Bell won in a Mirage GR8.

Martini & Rossi, 1968–2018

Dark blue, light blue and red stripes, usually on white or silver. Martini stickers first appeared on a Porsche 910 in April 1968. The big result came three years later. The Martini-backed works Porsche 917K, number 22, won the 1971 24 Hours of Le Mans with Helmut Marko and Gijs van Lennep. Under the paint, chassis 053 was one of three 917s built with an experimental magnesium frame. Martini Porsches won Le Mans again in 1976 and 1977 with the 936.

Then the stripes went rallying. Martini signed with Lancia in 1982, and the Group B 037 won the 1983 constructors' title. The Delta followed with constructors' titles every year from 1987 to 1992. The stripes returned to Formula 1 on Williams from 2014 to 2018.

John Player Special, 1972–1978, 1981–1986

Black with gold pinstripes and lettering. When the Lotus 72 arrived in 1970, it wore the red, cream and gold of Gold Leaf. For 1972 it switched to black and gold for John Player Special, and the car looked like nothing else on the grid.

It also won. Emerson Fittipaldi took five wins in the 72 that season and became the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history at the time. Lotus kept the constructors' title in 1973. By the time the 72 retired, it had 20 wins, two drivers' titles and three constructors' titles. JPS left after 1978, returned in 1981 and stayed until Camel took over for 1987.

Black should not work on a race car. On the Lotus 72, it was the whole point.

Rothmans, 1982–1987

White on top, dark blue below, split by red and gold lines. That is the Rothmans scheme, and it rode on Porsche's most dominant sports cars. The 956 debuted at Silverstone in May 1982. A month later at Le Mans it finished first, second and third, all three cars in Rothmans colors. Ickx and Bell won in the number 1 car.

Rothmans Porsches won Le Mans again in 1983, and in 1986 and 1987 with Bell, Hans Stuck and Al Holbert, the second of those beating the Silk Cut Jaguars. The colors went off-road too. A Rothmans-liveried Porsche 959 finished first and second at the 1986 Paris-Dakar.

Marlboro, 1974–1996

Red and white. Marlboro's colors arrived at McLaren with Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974 and stayed until the end of 1996, more than two decades in one scheme.

The peak was 1988. The Honda-powered MP4/4 won 15 of 16 races and took 15 of 16 pole positions. The only race it lost was Monza, where Ayrton Senna, leading with two laps to go, collided with a backmarker he was lapping. Senna won the drivers' title from teammate Alain Prost, eight wins to seven, and McLaren won the constructors' title by 134 points over Ferrari.

Silk Cut, 1986 onward

White base, big blocks of purple, yellow accents. Purple is not a racing color, which is why it worked. Silk Cut began backing Tom Walkinshaw Racing's Jaguars in 1986, and the XJR-6 won at Silverstone that year with Eddie Cheever and Derek Warwick.

The XJR-9 delivered the big one. At Le Mans in 1988, Jan Lammers, Johnny Dumfries and Andy Wallace won in car number 2. In the final hour the gearbox began to fail and Lammers nursed it home in fourth gear. It was Jaguar's first Le Mans win since 1957, and it ended Porsche's run of seven straight wins. Silk Cut Jaguar also won the 1988 teams' championship, with Martin Brundle the drivers' champion.

Calsonic, 1988 onward

All blue, white lettering. Calsonic, then Nihon Radiator, was backing Kazuyoshi Hoshino's Impul Nissans as early as 1982. The all-blue look arrived in 1988, when Nihon Radiator renamed itself Calsonic, and the R31 Skyline GTS-R was the first car to wear it.

The R32 GT-R made it famous. It debuted in March 1990 at the opening round of the Japanese touring car championship, and the Calsonic car won with Hoshino and Toshio Suzuki. From 1990 to 1993, the R32 won all 29 races it entered. The Calsonic car took the title in the first season and the last. For many JDM fans, a blue GT-R still means this car.

Castrol, 1993 onward

White, with sweeps of red and green. Castrol's colors went on Toyota Team Europe's Celica GT-Four in 1993, a model line that had already won Carlos Sainz the drivers' title in 1990 and 1992.

In Castrol colors, it won both the drivers' and manufacturers' world rally titles in 1993 and 1994. Didier Auriol was the 1994 champion, ahead of Sainz and Juha Kankkunen. The scheme was simple, and it looked as good covered in mud as it did clean.

Alitalia, 1975–1977

Red, white and green: the Italian airline's colors on Italy's most radical rally car. The Stratos was built for one job, and under team manager Cesare Fiorio it did it. It won the World Rally Championship constructors' title in 1974, 1975 and 1976, the last two in Alitalia colors.

Sandro Munari won the Monte Carlo Rally in a Stratos three years running, 1975 to 1977, and won the 1977 FIA Cup for Rally Drivers. The Alitalia car won the 1976 Rally of Portugal. The wedge shape gets the attention, but the airline colors are what people remember.

Porsche, 1971

Flesh pink, with butcher's cut lines and names drawn across the body. The 917/20 was wide and stubby. According to legend, Martini's Count Rossi refused to let it race in his colors, and Anatole Lapine's design team at Porsche answered with a joke. They painted it pink and marked it up like a pig at the butcher's.

Reinhold Joest and Willi Kauhsen drove the number 23 car at Le Mans in 1971. It qualified seventh and ran third at halfway, then crashed out at Arnage overnight after a brake failure. It raced once and became a legend anyway. In 2018 a Manthey-run Porsche 911 RSR won the GTE Pro class at Le Mans in the same pink.

The Pink Pig never finished a race. Decades later, Porsche painted a race car to look like it.

STP, 1972–2000, returned 2013

Petty blue and day-glo red. Petty blue started as an accident: in the late 1950s the team was short of paint and mixed leftover blue and white. In 1972 STP's Andy Granatelli wanted Petty's car all red. Petty refused. They settled on the two-tone red and blue, and it became more famous than either color alone.

The deal ran 28 years. Under STP, Petty won the Daytona 500 in 1973, 1974, 1979 and 1981. On July 4, 1984, he won the Firecracker 400 at Daytona in the number 43 STP Pontiac for his 200th Cup win, with President Ronald Reagan at the track.

Brock Racing Enterprises, 1970–1972

Red, white and blue stripes, drawn by Peter Brock. Brock trained as a car designer at Art Center. In the late 1960s Japanese cars were almost unknown in American racing, and he wanted his Datsuns seen. The stripes ran over the hood and down the front fenders, angled to match the windshield so they read like an arrow.

The cars backed it up. BRE's 240Zs won SCCA national titles in 1970 and 1971. In the Trans-Am Under 2.5 Liter class, John Morton's number 46 Datsun 510 won Datsun the manufacturers' title in 1971, ahead of Alfa Romeo and BMW, and Morton took the drivers' title in 1972.

Camel, 1987–1990

Bright yellow and blue. For 1987 Camel replaced John Player Special at Lotus, and the black car turned yellow. The 99T ran Honda turbo power and electronic active suspension that held the car at a steady ride height.

Ayrton Senna won with it at Monaco and Detroit, both bumpy street circuits where the active car had an edge. Detroit was the last Grand Prix win in Team Lotus history. It still looks like the end of an era.

Repsol, 1995–2024

Repsol orange. The Spanish oil company became Honda's title partner in the premier class of Grand Prix motorcycle racing in 1995 and stayed through 2024, nearly three decades on the same bikes.

The results are hard to match. Mick Doohan won the title in the first Repsol year and the three after it. Àlex Crivillé won in 1999, Valentino Rossi in 2002 and 2003, Nicky Hayden in 2006 and Casey Stoner in 2011. Marc Márquez added six: 2013, 2014 and 2016 through 2019. That is 15 premier-class riders' titles in Repsol colors.

Red Bull, 2005–present

Dark blue, covered in Red Bull's own logos. This one is different. The team carries the brand's name, so the livery is the brand. Red Bull Racing started in 2005.

The RB6 won the team's first constructors' title in 2010, and Sebastian Vettel clinched his first drivers' title at the final round in Abu Dhabi, winning from pole. It was the first of four straight doubles. The RB9 sealed Vettel's fourth consecutive title in 2013. The team won the constructors' title again in 2022 and 2023.