F1 75 Breakdown
Hi! I watched F1 75 live from home, and I thought I would break down not only what I saw but what I thought about it. For some context: This is being posted about a week or so after the event, and many others have already given their thoughts about what happened. When I started writing this, I hadn't seen what most others had to say, so I opted to keep it that way as I continued to write it throughout the week. So if I end up hitting points that have already been scrubbed through, I apologize! I also apologize for any odd formatting, especially during the timing breakdowns. It's not as clean as I wanted it to look, but hopefully it still gets the point across!
This ended up being quite long, about 9,761 words, but I hope you enjoy! I had a lot of fun making this, and if you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. Happy racing season everyone!
I've already seen this be said by a few others, but overall, this could have been an email or thirty second video (because that's pretty much how long each team had to speak). The event was really just two hours of pomp and circumstance with about two minutes of actually seeing the 2025 liveries.
Let's note: these were the new liveries (paint jobs) on the old cars. So there wasn't the added excitement of seeing engineering design changes, new rear wings, new sidepods, or anything. This was strictly a show for the paint jobs, which, within the past few years, have never been anything special year to year.
From start to finish, the whole thing was messy. F1 announced the event last year, and yet couldn't be bothered to tell us who was hosting the event and who the musical acts were until literally the day before the event. The ticketing situation was also a Ticketmaster-style nightmare, with bots immediately buying hoards of tickets to resell them at exorbitant prices to actual fans. Then, F1 announced that those tickets would be voided to try and avoid the resale of the tickets. I forget how that situation concluded, but it definitely raised the question of who would get to go to the event if lots of tickets were already bought by bots and scalpers. Somehow, though, they seemed to end up with close to a full arena, so I suppose that's a good thing, but it was still messy.
The press release from the day before the event led me to believe that they would host the event on F1TV alongside their YouTube page. I ended up being wrong, which is fine, and we could only watch the event on the YouTube page. There were only one or two blips in the stream, which is great, but this would have been a wonderful advertising opportunity for F1TV, and I really don't understand why F1 wouldn't host their own event on their own streaming platform alongside their YouTube platforms.
Then, the event itself was also kind of messy. Some of it was on par with hosting a live event, such as when the audio for Stake's video came from the arena, not the video file itself, but some of it was just weird. At one point, Jack Whitehall introduced some of his co-hosts, which consisted of actual F1 pundits (as opposed to an outside comedian like Jack). Jack asked the pundits questions about F1, including if drivers had to "rawdog it" throughout the race with no music. One pundit, Ariana Bravo, flat out refused to answer his question on the "boot space" (trunk space for us Americans) of an F1 car. He pressed her on it, and she refused and made him move on. Honestly, I commend her for refusing to answer bullshit questions like that. Jack then proceeded to not listen to an answer to another question he asked of Laura Winter, claiming that he "got lost in Charles' eyes." That was a cute moment, sure, but Jack otherwise seemed to make the actual F1 pundits uncomfortable. Thankfully, that was the only time they were seen together for the whole event, so nothing further happened.
Jack's comedy was sometimes fun, like when he talked about Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff's break up ("Your partner of ten years running off with an Italian stallion"), and when he poked fun at Max Verstappen and George Russell's beef and Max just not wanting to be there. But Jack often missed the mark, as shown above and when he played up the sex appeal of James Vowles and Charles Leclerc. Sure, it's a funny running joke within F1 fan communities, but not a joke I want to see at F1's premiere pre-season event. However, I think he did a decent job overall of hosting, especially for not being a normal F1 commentator or pundit. We certainly could have had worse.
The music was, to put it plainly, not it. I kind of figured it would be that way when I didn't recognize any of the names F1 announced the day before the event, but that was just sad. None of the music fit the "high-octane energy" that F1 so often tries to encapsulate. Most of the music was slower-paced or fit for a Walmart, and was just not really enjoyable. If that kind of music is your thing, great! Definitely not trying to yuck your yum here. I just don't think it fits F1's thing. Especially when they finished the broadcast with a slow dredge of a pop song from Take That. I've never heard of Take That or any of the other musical acts before, and this event solidified that I'm totally fine with never hearing of them again.
The event also advertised that they would have celebrities galore, when they really just...didn't. I quite enjoyed Gordon Ramsay's appearance, though. They had him give his take on the swearing ban (Gordon is known to swear like a sailor), and he said that the ban was bad live on air, which made the arena erupt in cheers. However, they could have brought in and shown off other celebrities as well. I really think they should have brought in Terry Crews for the event. He was at a few races last year, has reportedly fallen in love with the sport, and even hosted interviews after Vegas. Bringing in a celebrity like that who has a genuine love for F1 would have been a wonderful addition to the evening.
Throughout the event, F1 showed multiple videos in between the team reveals that talked about legacies, legendary rivalries, technological innovations, etc. In the first video of the event, it encapsulates the idea of "75 years of F1" as kind of an overview of the event. They talk about legendary drivers, races, and how we have 75 years of racing behind us and 75+ more years of racing to look forward to. They show racers of the past and current eras, and it's overall a nice video. However, right at the end, they mention that now there's "F1 for everyone," and accompany the statement with a single shot of a woman fan. Then, they finish the video with more footage of male fans, race drivers, etc. They never once show any women drivers, engineers, or a second shot of 'normal' women fans. Allow me to be transparent: they show three shots of women in this video. One was a shot of a classic-era WAG ("wife and girlfriend"), back when the WAGs would keep timing information for their partners. The second was the aforementioned woman fan, who was from the modern era and wearing a McLaren cap. The final shot was of Kendall Jenner enjoying a Ferrari VIP experience at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix. Despite the inclusion of those three short clips, it really felt like a sentiment of "Here! Fine! Will this shut you females up?" from F1, and it completely disregarded the work that hundreds of women contribute to Formula 1 each season. Even if they couldn't show the F1 Academy drivers for copyright reasons, they could have showcased any of the other women they employ, but they specifically chose not to. That doesn't sit right with me, especially with the recent American Executive Order from President Trump to roll back all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government. Yes, F1 is not the American government, but many companies outside of the federal government (who operate internationally) chose to follow the Executive Order and roll back their own DEI programs, and F1 is making a large attempt to become a significant part of the American economy and sports lexicon. F1 hasn't explicitly stated anything, but avalanches don't start with a boulder, they start with a pebble. To be fair, the event later showed a video jointly showcasing F2, F3, and F1 Academy, so that's a plus.
Something notable that happened is that, as I mentioned briefly above, Gordon Ramsay denounced the FIA's 'no swearing' rule, causing the arena to erupt in cheers. I mention that here because at another point in the show, Laura Winter mentioned the FIA in a segment (she was talking about the work of the marshals and volunteers to keep the sport safe), and the arena erupted in boos for the FIA (notably not for the marshals and volunteers). Laura, graceful as always, kept a straight face while she waited for the crowd to settle, and continued on with her duties. Even though Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the head of the FIA, was (notably) not in attendance, F1's discontentment of the recent actions of the FIA will have surely reached his ears. Whether or not he will care or make changes, however, will remain to be seen. I think F1 was able to get away with these things during the event because this was an event run by F1 itself, not the FIA. While the FIA oversees sporting rules for F1, the event was not a sporting event, and was therefore likely not subject to the rules the FIA chooses to implement. This could also be why Ben chose not to appear, but it certainly didn't help his image.
Somehow, we're just now getting to the actual point of the show, which was showcasing the 2025 liveries for the Formula 1 cars. 1,726 words in and we're only now getting to the meat and potatoes of the event. While part of that is because I just tend to 'over-write' things, it's also because showing the liveries felt like one of the least important parts of the entire event. To me, at least, it seemed like we didn't see the liveries hardly at all, despite that being the point of the whole event. To find out, I went back into the event's video and picked out the start and end of each team's presentation. My timing differs from the 'chapters' of the video, as the chapters sometimes included the in-between segments in a team's presentation.
Let's go ahead and break it down, shall we?
Total runtime of the stream: 2:03:58
Below is the list of liveries in order of appearance (reverse 2024 Constructor's Championship result order) and how much time they got for their presentations (including timestamps of the stream):
Stake: 13:38 - 20:52 (7 minutes 14 seconds)
Williams: 23:16 - 29:59 (6 minutes 43 seconds)
VCARB: 32:52 - 39:59 (7 minutes 7 seconds)
Haas: 43:40 - 50:22 (6 minutes 42 seconds)
Alpine: 56:43 - 59:03 (2 minutes 20 seconds)
Aston Martin: 1:02:07 - 1:10:15 (8 minutes 8 seconds)
Mercedes: 1:14:32 - 1:21:07 (6 minutes 35 seconds)
Red Bull: 1:23:39 - 1:30:45 (7 minutes 6 seconds)
Ferrari: 1:32:18 - 1:40:06 (7 minutes 48 seconds) (note: 1:31:28 to 1:32:18 was a birthday tribute to Enzo Ferrari (50 seconds))
McLaren: 1:42:39 - 1:50:05 (7 minutes 26 seconds)
Total: 1 hour, 7 minutes, 59 seconds (including Enzo Ferrari tribute)
Team with the most time:
Aston Martin with 8:08 of runtime
However, if you count Enzo's birthday as Ferrari time, then Ferrari had the most time with 8:38
Team with the least time:
Alpine with 2:20 of runtime
Average time each team got:
6 minutes 48 seconds of runtime
However, this was not divided equally, as shown above
Timing of the musical acts (excluding Tems, who was a part of Aston Martin's presentation) (again including timestamps for the stream):
mgk (previously known as Machine Gun Kelly): 1:42 - 5:23 (3 minutes 41 seconds)
Kane Brown: 40:30 - 43:37 (3 minutes 17 seconds)
Brian Tyler's Are We Dreaming: 51:48 - 56:43 (4 minutes 55 seconds)
Take That: 1:52:04 - 1:59:09 (7 minutes 5 seconds)
Total: 18:58
Out of the total runtime of 2:03:58:
The teams got 1:07:59
Musical acts got 18:58
Making for a total of teams + music = 1:26:57
This left F1 itself with 37 minutes and 1 second of its own runtime. They used their time for celebratory videos, interviews, and commentary by Jack Whitehall and the F1TV team.
If you want to total it the other way around and combine F1 itself with musical acts, then they got 55 minutes and 59 seconds total.
Regardless, the teams themselves got just barely over half of the runtime of the event. Directly in half would have been 1:01:59, and the teams got 1:07:59. I am not the greatest at math, and I've used this calculator to help me, but I have found that 2:03:58 / 1.823 = 1:08:00, which is why I say 'just barely over half'. Take this information for what you will, be it good or bad. On the one hand, I understand why there had to be so much time dedicated to things other than the teams, but on the other hand, the event was advertised as being for the teams, so I would want them to have the vast majority of the time.
Even though the teams got just over half of the allotted time, it felt a lot shorter because of the rather short amount of time we actually saw the liveries. Each team used up the majority of their time on a video or some sort of live production, and the livery reveal felt like a transition from the video presentation to the interviews that occurred at the end of 9 of the 10 teams' time slot. For the one team that did not have an interview, we saw even less of the car because the broadcasters wanted to balance showing the car, drivers, performers, and crowd in a very short amount of time. Because the event was advertised as a livery reveal, having only about a minute or two per team to take in each new livery made the actual reveal portions of the evening feel too short in comparison with the rest of the night. I appreciate the videos/live productions from each team, but I wish we had gotten more time with clearer shots of the cars.
I listed the teams above in the order in which they appeared, so that's the order in which I'll talk about them.
Stake:
I thought they had the right idea for the show factor of the presentation! In addition to their video, they brought out a drumline for the live audience. They used light-up sticks (in Stake green) and traditional grip, but it became very obvious that they were being dubbed over, which was a bummer. Even if you don't know drum stuff, you could see that they placed sound dampening pads over the actual drumheads, which is a visual indicator that their live sound was not being used. My thought process is that sure, drums are loud indoors, but F1 cars are loud too! Let those drummers play! But regardless of the dubbing, I liked that they brought out a live element to their presentation as opposed to only a video. The video was good, and I liked how they had narration throughout the video as well as the live drumming that tried to hype up the audience for the team and season. They did a very good job at a first impression for what the teams were supposedly going to do!
Stake's livery is good, albeit a bit basic. It has Stake green on the front and midsection of the car, and gradients to black at the back of the car. There's not a lot of fancy design to it, but if you're a back-marker team trying to save weight and still look good, I think this is a solid way to go about it. The green is a nice, bold color and definitely distinguishes the car from the rest of the field because the green is situated at the front and top of the car. This will allow us to identify the car from pretty much every common camera angle during the race, which I definitely appreciate.
Interview time: 18:52 - 20:00 (1:08)
Williams:
I think they did a very nice job of an actual 'reveal' of the car. They started off with a quick video showcasing the legacy of the team in their heyday, and ended it with the tagline "That was then. This is now." which flowed very nicely into the car reveal. It's a little unfortunate that they didn't involve any current-day clips, though. Even though the team hasn't had a lot of success within the past few years, they've still had some very nice moments that they could have included (I'm thinking things like Alex Albon's double overtake in Canada, etc.). However, I like that they kept the video short and sweet and largely kept the focus on the new car itself. We saw plenty of angles of the car and got plenty of time to see the design of it before we got to the interview portion of the presentation.
The livery is nice, but, like Stake, is a little basic. It's blue all over with not a lot of fancy designs. It's very apparent that Williams has a new title sponsor in Atlassian, as their name is the biggest name on the car, appearing on the back half of the car and front and rear wings. They've kept the Duracell battery design on their upper air intake, and even if that joke is getting old, it's a joke I still love. The dark blue is nice, but combined with the carbon black from other parts of the car makes it a little too dark for me. I fear that the car may start to blend in to the track, especially when looking at a shot that includes them and other more brightly cars they may be fighting, like Stake and Alpine. However, it still looks nice, and I don't really have any complaints. I think Williams did a better job incorporating their title sponsor than Ferrari, as Atlassian blue blends in to Williams blue quite nicely.
Last note: When I was watching back the interview to get time stamps, I noticed that when Ariana Bravo was introducing the drivers, their names lit up on the floor beneath them in the same yellow bubble style that's on their cars and race suits. That was a very nice touch that I missed when I watched it live.
Interview time with selfie attempt: 27:11 - 29:35 (2:24)
Interview time without selfie attempt: 27:11 - 29:05 (1:54)
VCARB:
Visa CashApp Racing Bulls (VCARB) knows they have a problem. Aside from having a competitive car, their problem is that no one knows how to officially address the team due to the large amount of name changes in a relatively short amount of time. For some context: Starting in the 2006 season, the Minardi team became Scuderia Toro Rosso after being sold to Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. 'Toro Rosso' is Italian for 'Red Bull', which is a nod to the team's home base in Faenza, Italy. While the official name changed in 2018 to Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda, the colloquial name remained Toro Rosso until the end of 2019. Starting in the 2020 season, Toro Rosso got renamed to Scuderia AlphaTauri in order to promote Red Bull's fashion brand of the same name (minus the "Scuderia"). This rebrand was also an attempt to realign AlphaTauri from Red Bulls' junior racing team to a sister team for front-running Oracle Red Bull Racing. Unfortunately, a rebrand doesn't make faster cars, and the team continued to struggle as a back-marker team. Just as people were getting used to calling the team 'AlphaTauri,' the team decided to change their name and branding once more after acquiring title sponsors in Visa and CashApp. As of the start of the 2024 season, the team was officially called Visa CashApp Racing Bulls. Because that's such a mouthful for fans and commentators alike, the name was colloquially abbreviated to VCARB (pronounced "vee-carb"). The name "Racing Bulls" was also an option that was thrown around, but it seemed that the team preferred the abbreviation instead, likely due to it including the mention of their sponsors. This (Visa CashApp Racing Bulls/VCARB/Racing Bulls) is the current name that the team employs, and we are entering the second season of its use.
Despite the changes, many fans still call the team by their previous names. Some choose Toro Rosso due to it being in use for over a decade, others choose AlphaTauri due to their timing of becoming a fan, but most all who choose to use a different name do so because they don't like the influx of title partners and seemingly constant changing of naming, both official and colloquial. To try and clear things up for us, VCARB used their presentation to let us know the right name to call them. They employed comedian Munya Chawawa to conduct man-on-the-street-style interviews with various Londoners to spread the word on the name. Some people were obvious plants (such as the older woman wearing a Yuki Tsunoda shirt and the gentleman wearing a Hugo hoodie), but some people seemed to be actual 'people on the street,' and Munya did a good job with the role he was given. But, despite all of this effort from the team, it's still a little unclear which version of the name they want to be used. Do they want their full name, Visa CashApp Racing Bulls, their abbreviation, VCARB, or their half name, Racing Bulls, to be used? In the video, they kept saying the full name, but the graphics seemed to use Racing Bulls, and the fans seem to have gotten somewhat used to saying VCARB. No matter what, though, the message was simple: Visa CashApp Racing Bulls/VCARB/Racing Bulls is here to stay.
Regardless of the naming shenanigans, I think VCARB had one of the best liveries of the night. It's predominantly white in color and utilizes the Red Bull colors of red and yellow and the Visa CashApp blue and green as accent colors. The rear of the car has small blue bull decals that start sporadic but get closer and closer until they morph into a blue hue at the back of the car. The upper air intake has a Red Bull red bull on it, a design taken from the sister Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) team. It's a very nice refreshed design for the VCARB team, and the predominance of the white on the car alongside the striking red and yellow will allow us to spot them easily on track. The race suits look very good too, notably using a green stripe as a barrier in between the predominant white color and the blue accents. Overall, it seems like VCARB has settled into their new image, as opposed to the hodgepodge we've seen in previous years when they were a revolving door for drivers, sponsors, and overall design. It's cohesive, clean, and a delight to see.
I would also like to quickly mention that during their interview, team principal Laurent Mekies decided to say that he and the VCARB team believe in a "no blame" policy. I was a little frustrated by that, because within the past few years there has definitely been blame placed on drivers Nyck de Vries and Daniel Ricciardo, both of whom were very unceremoniously dropped by the team in the 2023 and 2024 seasons, respectively. Notably, Nyck was dropped with hardly a word from the team in 2023 and was replaced by Daniel, who was brought in with disgustingly over-the-top fanfare. Then, in September 2024, Daniel was dropped two hours before the Singapore Grand Prix. Only Daniel was told before the race, and the media was not told until multiple days after the race, leaving everyone in limbo for most of the weekend. It was an incredibly disrespectful way to fire a driver who has had a significant impact on the sport of Formula 1 as a whole, so to hear the team principal state that he believes in "no blame" falls flat on my ears.
Interview time with selfie: 37:08 - 39:05 (1:57)
Interview time without selfie: 37:13 - 39:05 (1:52)
Haas:
Haas' presentation tied in to the musical appearance of Kane Brown, which surprised me (simply because that was not mentioned ahead of time). Kane was the narrator for their video, which talked about doing Formula 1 "the American way." I commend the video editors for what they accomplished, because they were able to make a back-marker team who has had their fair share of troubles on and off the track seem like a very promising and cool team that's "just getting started" in their 10th year of running. I would have appreciated if they had had Kane take about two steps back, as I think he was far too close to the camera, but overall it was a solid video, and it was nice that the American team partnered up with the American musician (who wasn't the highly controversial mgk). I will always find it hilarious, though, that the American team seemingly doesn't employ American workers in their high-up positions (notably drivers and team principal), and their only real tie to the States is their namesake sponsor, Gene Haas and their home base in Kannapolis, North Carolina, United States.
Haas' livery is solid, and stays in line with the brand identity they've built over the last decade. The body is a mix of white and black, with red sprinkled in on the front and rear wings and as an accent and border color. The sidepods are white with "Haas" emblazoned in black. It'll be relatively easy to not only spot on track but also differentiate from other cars. Even though both Haas and VCARB are predominantly white, they're different enough that it'll be easy to tell them apart if and when they have battles on track.
Interview time: 47:54 - 49:50 (1:56)
Alpine:
Alpine's presentation thoroughly confused me, but I don't think it was their fault. When we got the press release the day before the event telling us who was hosting and performing, they mentioned that Brian Tyler's Are We Dreaming was one of the performers. Brain Tyler is the composer of the Formula 1 theme song, but he was going to perform as his alter ego, called Are We Dreaming, who, as we found out during the event, focuses much more on EDM-style music than the orchestral themes for which we know Brian Tyler. When F1 announced the performers, they didn't announce that they would be a part of any team's presentation, but it seems that Are We Dreaming was Alpine's entire presentation. To me, this is slightly different than Haas using Kane Brown for their presentation, because Kane had his performance, and was then involved in Haas' presentation that was separate from the performance. Are We Dreaming's performance, however, bled right in to Alpine's presentation, and instead of getting a performance and then a 6-7 minute team presentation, we got an almost 5-minute performance and a 2-minute team presentation. It was just odd scheduling to me, because, for example, Aston Martin brought in an artist named Tems for their presentation, but she was not listed as one of the musical acts in the press release. It just added to some of the general messiness of the event, unfortunately. Either Tems should have been announced as a musical act with mgk, Kane Brown, Are We Dreaming, and Take That, or Are We Dreaming shouldn't have been announced with the rest of the musical acts. Either way, I don't think this is Alpine's fault, and while I do fault them for their taste in musical acts, I don't fault them for the mix-up.
Even though Alpine had the single shortest presentation of the night (as I am not counting Are We Dreaming as a part of their time due to the musician not being described as part of Alpine's presentation), they still made good use of their limited time. They didn't waste a single second on frivolous videos or narration, and showed off the car right away. They did have a video, but it was more general shots of the drivers and the car, and the broadcasters did a good job to keep the camera's focus on the car. I believe that Alpine had one of the best liveries of the night, as we finally got the pink car we were promised last year. Last year, the team made promises of having a blue and pink car, but the car they delivered was about 90% carbon fiber black and about 10% pink or blue, which greatly disappointed fans. This year, though, they ditched most of the carbon fiber for a striking combination of pink and blue. The pink is mostly on the nose and front and rear wings, while blue takes over the sidepods. Title sponsor BWT is in pink on the blue sidepods and blue on the pink wings. I think this is a gorgeous design comeback, and even though their presentation was confusing and much shorter than we thought it would be, I think Alpine did a wonderful job with their portion of the event. I look forward to seeing that beautiful pink and blue car out on track.
Interview time: 57:48 - 58:40 (0:52)
Aston Martin:
Aston Martin, by far, understood the assignment. F1 asked for a presentation, and Aston Martin knocked it out of the park. Of course, because of the team's obvious title connection with Aston Martin, they made their presentation be themed around James Bond (who notably drives an Aston Martin). Before any video played, they had sirens blaring and spotlights weaving throughout the crowd. They then showed a video of Agents 0014 and 0018 (a spoof combination of James Bond's agent number (007) and the drivers' racing numbers (14 and 18)) using speed boats to race towards the event center, which is evidently on the banks of a river. They're being chased by an unnamed villain, and the two narrowly avoid the villain's missiles. Then they deploy the DRS system on the boats to give them a last boost of speed to jump out of the water and onto ropes dangling from an Aramco-branded hot air balloon (Aramco is another title sponsor). They slide down the ropes and into the venue. We cut away from the video to watch Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll enter the venue dressed as their CGI counterparts from the video - suit and tie plus their racing helmets. They take off their helmets to reveal themselves, and then descend the stairs towards the stage. All of this occurs while various James Bond musical themes play.
But, we're not done yet! The broadcast cuts to a new video, which is a beautifully animated history of car racing and Aston Martin from 1913 to the present. There's no narration to the video, except at the end when a narrator says "We are Aston Martin," but the video is gorgeous and employs an artistic style similar to the recently popularized styles of film like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
And we're still not done! Next, Aston Martin brings a musician named Tems on stage to sing a song that's backed by 'live' violinists and horn players. I put 'live' in quotations because I'm pretty sure that, like the Stake drummers, they were dubbed over for the song. Regardless, Tems does a wonderful job singing, and while she sang, the car was rolled out onto the stage for all to see. During the song, the broadcasters briefly showed Jessica Hawkins, Aston Martin's Head of F1 Academy and Driver Ambassador, and Lawrence Stroll, Executive Chairman and part owner of Aston Martin (the actual car brand) and full owner of Aston Martin F1. Towards the end of the performance, drivers Fernando and Lance walk out onto the stage alongside team principal Andy Cowell. Notably, Andy was the one who interviewed the drivers, which I found to be a little odd. Most other teams utilized pundits or an an external person for the interviews. But I did like how the presentation allowed the drivers time to show up in suit and tie with their helmets and then disappear and change into their race suits. That was a very good way to handle the timing of the presentation, as it still kept our attention while the drivers were away.
Aston Martin's livery, sadly, did not wow me like their presentation did. They kept the same color scheme as last year, with Aston Martin green and black as the main colors, but added in a more neon green or yellow-ish color as an accent. However, they added black to the sidepods, which way overshadows the use of the Aston Martin green that's used on the front nose and majority of the rest of the car. I wish they had kept the green on the sidepods, or at least made a design of sorts that was majority green with a little black thrown in. I think the neon green/yellow looks okay, but it slightly clashes with the Aston Martin green.
Even though the livery wasn't the prettiest one of the night, I think Aston Martin had the best presentation of the night, by far. Some teams put on a presentation, but Aston Martin put on a show.
Interview time: 1:08:49 - 1:10:11 (1:22)
Mercedes:
Mercedes' video had a clear motif of circles, a decision that played very well into their own circular logo. The video had a narration that talked about dreams, and how you can improve from both your successes and failures. Alongside the circular motif was the tagline "Every dream needs a team," which was introduced late last year during Lewis Hamilton's departure from the team. The video also included the infamous crash between then-teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Spain 2016, which many say was a key point in the downfall of the 'bromance' between Lewis and Nico, commonly called Brocedes. Mercedes also included a quick clip of Lewis' famous Singapore 2018 qualifying lap, which is often considered one of the best qualifying laps of all time. Take it for what you will, but I find it odd that they included footage of Lewis (good and bad) while this is Lewis' first season away from Mercedes. On the other hand, I can understand including Spain 2016 due to it being a big turning point in recent Mercedes history, and including Singapore 2018 due to it being one of the greatest qualifying laps of all time.
After the video, Mercedes decided to bring out the car and attempt a showcase pitstop (meaning not at full speed). Unfortunately, as often happens with live events, something went wrong, and the right front tire did not come off on the first try. The tire did come off on the next try, but the whole look of a sleek pitstop was sadly shattered. The broadcasters did have the grace to quickly cut away to a different angle until the pitstop was completed, which was kind. Thankfully for Mercedes, the event was not a race, but hopefully they get that worked out for the start of the season. It was both sad and funny to see a top team mess up a pitstop like they were a midfield or back-marker team during a showcase of the sport, though.
The livery is good looking! Not incredibly different from last year, though. They've kept the Mercedes silver and title sponsor Petronas green front nose, and have opted to gradient the silver out to black towards the rear of the car. At the rear of the car are multiple 'silver arrows' (the inside three-pronged portion of the Mercedes logo), and the upper air intake starts silver and also gradients out to black at the back of the car. The front and rear wings are black with white sponsor decals, and the driver numbers are dark gray/black (as opposed to being personal branding colors for the driver). The outer sidepods are black. It's not too different from last year's livery, but I like that they've kept the silver nose. That will help identify the car while on track from an upper or front angle, and the silver upper air intake will help identify the car from the side. They've also painted the inner portions of the sidepods silver, so that will also help with in-air identification. Petronas is in white on the black sidepod, but I usually find that it's easier to pick out cars based on their main colors rather than their sponsors. Overall, they've employed the philosophy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Interview time: 1:18:11 - 1:20:32 (2:21)
Red Bull:
In a word: Huh?
Red Bull's presentation started a little different than the precedent set by the other teams. Instead of starting with a video or a live entertainment bit, they played a Rolling Stones song and team principal Christian Horner came up on stage to give a small speech. When he was announced as a speaker, he was booed by some of the crowd. The booing could be for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to, his sexual harassment allegations, his treatment of his drivers at both Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) and Visa CashApp Racing Bulls (VCARB) (notable examples including Daniel Ricciardo, Checo Perez, and Yuki Tsunoda), or even fans disliking the outcome of the 2021 Drivers' Championship, in which Red Bull driver Max Verstappen controversially won the championship at the last lap of the final race in Abu Dhabi. Christian caught on to the booing and stumbled through his opening words.
"Is that, uh... Well, it's fantastic to be here in the O2 anyway. So I hope you're all having a good evening!" Was how Horner opened his speech. This received more boos from the crowd.
He then seemingly recovered and went on to talk about the reasoning of the song and pointed out how Max Verstappen won 9 races in the previous season. He then talked about bringing Liam Lawson onto the team and complimented ORBR's competition, saying it would be a "close championship." Christian ends his speech by saying that people are watching the event because they are car people, and Christian is giving the stage to them. This transitions the presentation to the prepared video, which is detailed below. I found it interesting that ORBR was the only team to put their team principal quite literally first, as every other team started with a video or live presentation promoting the team as a whole. I also found it interesting that Christian looked directly at the camera for the entirety of his speech. Whether that's because he was reading a teleprompter (that speech was too well written to be off the top of his head) or because he's nervous and doesn't know where to look except right at the camera is an answer I don't have. Either way, it was an odd departure from the norm set by every team that had already presented.
The video portion of the presentation was cute. It showed the 2025 ORBR car being covered and loaded into a ORBR-branded truck to be brought to the event. Various car nerds, including 2025 ORBR driver Liam Lawson and 'regular people', hunt down the truck. There's a brief stop at a chicken shop (which could be a nod to Lando Norris' popular Chicken Shop Date from last year), and the specials of the day are the "Four WINg Special," "The Masterclass," and the "Salzburger," all of which are various Red Bull references. The customers at the chicken shop get their food and join the hunt for the ORBR truck. At a parking garage car meet, a man gets a video message from Max Verstappen to join the convoy, which the man and his friends go do. Then the word spreads to an underground car meet (which included Red Bull-branded BMX biking), and the people at that meet join in. The entire convoy make their way through London and make it to the O2, where they all get out of their cars to walk into the venue, and the F1 car starts to get unwrapped. Then the video cuts out and the people from the video walk on stage along with the car, Max, and Liam. They all walk along the catwalk to the front of the stage, where they are introduced by an announcer and wave to the crowd.
That's it. Max and Liam never spoke to the crowd, no interview by a host, nothing. We hardly got a close up shot of the livery either. Which, by the way, the livery is pretty much the same as last year, with the car being predominantly a dark blue color with Red Bull red and yellow as accents. If there are any tweaks to the livery, they were not able to be seen at this event. It left me (and much of the viewing crowd) wondering why we didn't get to hear from not only 2 of the 20 drivers on the grid, but also why we didn't get to hear from the 4-time and reigning world champion, Max. If the video didn't make sense without Christian's introduction, then they could have made it make sense by including something like "this is for the car people" somewhere in the video. The event was advertised as an evening from which we could see and hear from every driver and team principal, and it's very frustrating that we couldn't hear from, again, not only an entire team of drivers but also the 4-time and current world champion. Some people have made the joke that Max didn't want to speak or that he would swear, which is fun, but it's still a bit of frustrating false advertising, which adds in to the evening's recurring theme of messiness.
I have one late addition for this portion that I found as I was proofreading. As it turns out, Christian monologued for longer than some teams got interviewed for (which included four different people speaking in those interviews - three team members and an interviewer). He wasn't interviewed, but instead spoke for about a minute and a half of his own time. Before Christian came up on stage, they played a Rolling Stones song while showing basic footage of ORBR logos and drivers. There was nothing and nobody on stage during this time (the stage was actually dark during this moment), and the first person to speak during ORBR's presentation was Christian. If you add together the time that Christian spoke with the time the team essentially vamped with their song (which, to be fair, does have meaning for the team), they took up enough time to conduct either one 'long' interview, like many of the top teams received, or multiple short interviews, like the interviews midfield and back-marker teams got. I know there's really only a minute's difference between 'long' and 'short' interviews, but when the timing is as fast-paced and strict as this event was, every second counts and means something. Considering the allegations, rumors, and overall image that Christian has garnered over the past few years, it can really be put into question who made the decision to format ORBR's presentation in this way and the reasoning for it.
ORBR time before Christian showed up (vamping with the Rolling Stones song): 1:23:43 - 1:24:34 (0:51)
Christian Horner talking time: 1:24:34 - 1:26:01 (1:27)
Total time either vamping or Christian Horner speaking: 2:17
Interview time: None (0:00)
Ferrari:
Ferrari began their presentation with a birthday tribute to their founder, Enzo Ferrari. It was a quick dedication to his massive contribution to motorsport and it thanked him for all he had done. I'm not sure if it was part of F1's portion or Ferrari's portion of the evening, but either way it was a nice touch, especially considering that without Enzo's innovations and contributions, F1 wouldn't be what it is today.
The tribute then led into Ferrari's presentation video, which started out looking like a drafting table complete with black and white sketches of the Ferrari logo, original Ferrari F1 cars, and the keyword "dream." Then the video transitioned to color and the current Ferrari logo, and showed the transition from classic F1 cars to current day F1 cars with various keywords including "passion," "ambition," and "innovation." The video ended with the tagline "We belong to racing," before they transitioned to showing the car. There was no narration throughout the video, which made it feel almost detached and very corporate. I think it would have been neat to include some words from Enzo in the video, which would help it tie in to his birthday tribute. My only other criticism is that when they cut to the video on the broadcast, they had it positioned too high up on the screen, leaving a lot of dead space on the lower third of the screen. Not a big thing by far, but it bugged me ever so slightly, and I likely noticed it because the video was just rather boring overall. There's nothing wrong with the video, but it wasn't very exciting to watch.
Then the Ferrari car rolls out onto stage all on its lonesome. The livery is pretty decent, but there's way too much HP involved. Of course, they're Ferrari's new title sponsor, so there's not much to be done about it, but it was everywhere on the car. There are two HP logos on the front wing (one on each side), two on the rear wing (one on each side), and two giant HP logos on the rear portion of the car (one on each side). I likely wouldn't have noticed the logos so much if there hadn't been so much 'controversy' (for lack of a better word) about the placement of the HP logo on team kits, cars, and just about everywhere HP could have put their logo. I'll give Ferrari a bit of a break here, though: it's very hard to integrate a title sponsor whose company colors clash incredibly hard with your own company colors, and I think they tried to do what they could to bridge the gaps. Regardless, I'm not a big fan of the giant diagonal white stripe on the rear portion of the car that solely houses the blue HP logo. Because of the white stripe, they have to move a bunch of other sponsor logos to other locations of the car, which makes the sides and front nose of the car look incredibly busy. That busyness partially covers up the gorgeous deep red color they chose for the main body of the car. Ferrari didn't tell us the name of the color aside from a "darker shade of 2025 Racing Red," but according to this color chart, you could match the red to some of the darker reds shown such as Rosso Barchetta, Rosso Fiorano, or Rosso Singapore. Regardless, I love the decision to opt for a darker shade of their classic red color, and I think it looks incredibly elegant, which is a look they seem to be wanting to achieve with the addition of Lewis Hamilton on the team.
Interview time: 1:36:42 - 1:39:32 (2:50)
McLaren:
McLaren started the final presentation of the evening with a video, and it was a very similar video to Ferrari in that it showcased the evolution of McLaren's race cars and in that there was no narration. However, I believe that McLaren's video was slightly more fun to watch because there was more variation in the animations shown. For example, we saw some of the historical cars 'racing' each other down a nondescript straightaway. At the end of the video, they showed an in-helmet onboard of Lando after a race, in which he shouts "Woohoo! Papaya on top!" in a celebratory manner. Overall, a simple and well-done video, but not as interesting as other presentations of the evening.
McLaren also had a live element to the show, in which they brought on stage each of the historical cars shown in their video. They light them up one by one, each car one position closer to the 2025 car. When each car gets its spotlight, notable clips of the car are shown on arena screens as well as the 'camo' motif of papaya orange and black. Then they rightfully show off their 2024 Constructors' Champion trophy, before finally having CEO Zak Brown, team principal Andrea Stella, and interviewer Martin Brundle take the stage. Martin briefly interviews the two, talking about 75 years of Formula 1, the team's success the prior year, and what the team and fans can look forward to in the year ahead. Then, Zak and Andrea unveil the car without the drivers, who walk onto stage shortly after. The drivers are made to walk the entire stage, which takes a good half minute or so, and are then interviewed by Martin, answering similar questions that were asked of Zak and Andrea about being excited for the season ahead and what it felt like to drive the 2025 car in testing. They gave Zak the final word, and one last quick video was played. It featured the successes of McLaren's 2024 season and included the tagline "Never Stop Racing."
The livery had almost no changes from last year, which was highly disappointing. McLaren employed a special pre-event testing livery that was a very interesting camo design using papaya orange and black, and had shiny and matte black testing suits. If I remember correctly, there were no sponsors on either the car or the suit. While McLaren were transparent in saying that the testing livery was not going to be the official livery, I had thought that the official livery would be some sort of twist on the testing livery and employ the new camo motif that was being employed across social channels in addition to the testing materials. They even used the camo motif during their presentation, which added to the assumption that a design change was underway. However, the team has seemingly decided that their 2024 livery is their championship-winning design, and hope to take that luck into the 2025 season. The design is mostly papaya orange, with a large diagonal black stripe on the side and rear of the car. Like every other team, sponsor logos litter the car, and this is where most all of the changes take place as the teams take on new sponsors, such as MasterCard, which is featured on the front wing and inside of the rear wing. The've also changed the fonts for the driver numbers. While the design isn't terrible, I'm not a fan simply because of the seemingly major changes I thought were coming to the design. Perhaps I was naive when I saw pre-event messaging from McLaren, though.
Note: Due to how the presentation evolved, I'm marking interview timings by when Martin addressed the interviewees as opposed to when he starts talking (he talked quite a bit outside of the actual interviews).
Interview time (Zak and Andrea): 1:44:50 - 1:46:17 & 1:49:07 - 1:49:27 (<- Zak's 'final word') (1:27 & 0:20)
Interview time (Lando and Oscar): 1:47:37 - 1:49:07 (1:30)
Interview time (total): 3:17
~~~
That's all the liveries! My favorites were VCARB and Alpine, and my least favorite had to be McLaren and Red Bull, simply because they didn't change much of anything.
The best presentation, by far, was Aston Martin's, and I think my least favorite presentation was either Haas or Mercedes. Haas' was just rather forgettable, and although Mercedes tried to do something special, they couldn't pull off a (intentionally slow) pitstop, which is one of the most integral parts of a functioning F1 team.
I thought it was fun how some drivers, notably Charles Leclerc and Isack Hadjar, saw their car's livery for the first time during the reveal at the event. Fred made a moment of it, saying he wanted to keep Charles in suspense, but VCARB didn't acknowledge Isack's reaction until after the event. Either way, it was fun to see the drivers react right along with the fans.
It was really interesting to see how each team interpreted the 'guidelines' of the event (if there were any). Some teams, like Ferrari, just put together a basic little video and sent their car on their way, and other teams, like Aston Martin and Red Bull, tried to create an entire plot and storyline about getting the car and/or drivers to the event. Then there were some teams in the middle, like Stake bringing out drummers and Mercedes attempting a pit stop. My mom ended up pointing this out to me, but it also seemed that every driver and team principal had gotten some talking points that they were expected to hit, such as thanking the crowd for coming out 'to this wonderful event' and making sure to thank F1 for putting it on. Nothing really controversial there, but still interesting to note.
Final thoughts: I think that, despite all of the oddities of the evening, Formula 1 put on a good event. I wouldn't call it great, and I think that considering F1 is one of the largest and most sponsored sporting events in the world, they could have done a lot better with the evening. I mean, announcing your hosting and musical lineup 24 hours before your event is just sad. But for a first-ever run of an event like this, it certainly could have gone worse! I enjoyed seeing what each team brought to the table, and Jack Whitehall did have some fun moments while hosting. I like the idea of bringing every team together for a one-night show before the season starts, but I'm not sure I'd want it every year, especially considering almost every team had a car launch outside of this event. That just becomes too many events to follow, especially when we're really just trying to see the paint jobs on these cars, and most of the events have the same talking points ("We think this car is great!" "Our team has a wonderful heritage," "Our driver lineup is fabulous!" "We're going to do great things this year," etc.). I could definitely see F1's event being a good milestone event, especially as we start to head towards the 80th, 90th, and even 100th year of running F1 championships. There were a lot of good things to build upon, and I had a decent time watching from home. You could tell that there was, for lack of a better term, pandering towards the home London crowd, and the supposed 'British bias' was running strong throughout the event. That wasn't a huge problem for me this time, mainly because I kind of thought that would be the case for a London-based company (F1) hosting other UK-based teams and drivers (as well as other international teams and drivers) at an event center in London (the O2) with a British host, British celebrities, and a largely British crowd.
Overall, F1 75 was a mess, but a delightful one. It certainly had its areas in which it could improve, should this happen again in the future, but in the end, we had an evening of general fun with every team present and accounted for in some way, shape, or form. For a first foray into an awards-season-style event from F1 (the annual prize gala is run by the FIA), it wasn't all bad. It was a fun, lighthearted way to start the season, even if it was rather unnecessary, and despite all of its flaws, it made me excited to get racing once again.
If you've made it this far, thank you. I impulsively decided I wanted to write a breakdown on F1 75 after I watched it live, but I had no idea it would take this long to write or that I would go down so many rabbit holes while writing it. I almost quit after a few bad days with little writing getting done, but a few lovely people inspired me to keep going, and I had so much fun making this. I hope you've enjoyed it, and if you have anything to add, please do! And, please take what I've written with a grain of salt. We're all here to be fun little goobers on the internet talking about racing, and if you thought that, say, Ferrari had the best livery of the night and I'm crazy for thinking Alpine's was anywhere near good, that's great! Tell me why I'm crazy below, in a reblog, in my inbox, wherever!
By the time I'm posting this, F1 testing is already over. So, next up, we have racing in just a few short weeks (or sooner if you're following other racing categories)! I won't break everything that happens down like this (I think I would go crazy if I tried!), but there'll probably be a few things I'll work through like this. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears!
Happy racing season everyone! I can't wait to spend it all with you!
Love you all!! <3
