Lewis Hamilton has denied that, following his departure from Mercedes for the F1 2025 season, he will advocate for Ferrari to adopt a black livery.
The British driver has won six of his joint-record seven World Championships with Mercedes, with the German manufacturer’s engines powering every single one of Hamilton’s 341 appearances since his debut with McLaren in 2007.
Hamilton’s announcement earlier this year that he will join Ferrari on a multi-year contract from F1 2025, which ended his long and successful association with Mercedes, rocked the F1 world.
The British driver has won six of his joint-record seven World Championships with Mercedes.
Hamilton’s relationship with Mercedes has stretched out a long ways past the circuit, with the group dependably supporting the 39-year-old’s mission for more noteworthy variety in F1 and the engine dashing industry over ongoing years.
This included Mercedes adopting a predominantly black livery ahead of the postponed F1 2020 season as a protest against racism, and the color scheme will continue for the following year.
After switching back to their traditional silver color for F1 2022, Mercedes switched back to an all-black car last season, and the design of the W15 chassis for this year incorporates both black and silver.
For F1 2025, it has been suggested that Hamilton might try to convince Ferrari to switch from their recognizable scarlet-red color to a black livery.
But Hamilton talked about it at the Canadian Grand Prix this past weekend and said that his “impact work” with Ferrari president John Elkann is more likely to show up off the track during his time at Maranello.
Inquired as to whether he has considered mentioning a dark Ferrari F1 vehicle for next season, he told columnists: “I haven’t driven a dark vehicle for some time, so I presumably will not be pushing for that too soon on, yet no.”
We’ve talked a lot about impact work, and John and the team do a lot of philanthropy.
Because of this, we’ll be working closely with Mission 44 and their impact work.
“I think inside the game, we need to keep on accomplishing more, however more external we’ll do significantly together, so that is truly energizing.”
The FIA, F1’s governing body, is pushing for more “distinguishable” liveries for the upcoming season in light of the rise of exposed-carbon liveries, according to Hamilton’s remarks.
Since the introduction of ground-effect rules prior to the F1 2022 season, a number of teams have abandoned painting large portions of their vehicles in an attempt to save weight.
This has led to a grid largely comprised of black vehicles.
While the FIA is hesitant to enact livery-related regulations, it is keen to encourage teams to communicate more to avoid too much design overlap.
Bernie Collins, a former McLaren and Force India engineer, made the claim on the Sky F1 podcast that teams can color exposed carbon, but that the results could be subpar compared to the conventional paint solution.
She stated, “I believe there are methods for coloring carbon fiber.
You can either color the resin, which would give a little bit, but it won’t look as good as the paint we currently have, which is why I believe there are methods.”
As a result, carbon fiber performs best when it is black because the resins and other components function properly.
The major issue with color in the component, for instance, is that, if you can imagine a sidepod on a car, when it lines up and they mount it together, they paint it.
However, if you are putting the paint on at the manufacturing level, you have to be very clear that will end up in the right position in terms of the car later on.
You could tinge it, but you wouldn’t get something like a Ferrari red.
Instead, you would get something like a very dull she “So you’re making the assembling of that part a whole lot more muddled.
“I think that we might start the year with a lot of these carbon-strong liveries, and as teams find ways to save weight over the course of the year, more and more paint might come back on.
This is because the car is typically the heaviest at the beginning of the year, and then teams start finding ways to make it lighter as they learn more about it and become more reliable or whatever the case may be.
“Also, as we get increasingly more into the guidelines then ideally groups will begin down that way too.”
