Applying a livery against the clock
The inspiration behind Vuse’s Driven By Change design and how we switched livery in a matter of days
Our team have become accustomed to working under pressure to tight deadlines. In Qatar, we broke the record for the fastest pit-stop, and in Brazil, we repaired Oscar’s car against the clock during a Red Flag period to get him back out on track after he was caught up in a crash.
The team have been back at it again in Abu Dhabi, working overtime to apply Vuse’s Driven By Change livery to the MCL60, which will replace the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee-twist livery enhancement that took centre stage in the bright lights of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
What is Vuse’s 2023 Driven By Change platform?
Artist Nujood Al-Otaibi has been given this opportunity as part of Vuse’s Driven By Change platform. Vuse - a brand of Principal Partner BAT - has been running this programme for three years. It champions and gives opportunities to underrepresented artists through the global platform of motorsport including the canvas of McLaren’s F1 cars.
This platform was launched in 2021 and marked the first time a piece of original art had appeared on a livery in an F1 grand prix. Nujood’s design follows Rabab Tantawy’s at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and Anna Tangles’ in the same race in 2022.
Nujood - whose father is also an artist - has been drawing since she was three. She was diagnosed with a hearing impairment at a young age, and her artwork reflects the challenges she has faced.
Since then, Nujood has been on a journey of artistic discovery to find a style that she believed in. Initially, she focused on hyperrealism, a form of artwork with an emphasis on creating a piece that resembles a high-resolution photograph.
However, she wanted to express herself in different forms, and instead, trialled abstract, which is quite the opposite, and uses shapes, colours, and lines instead of trying to accurately depict a photograph or visual reality.
The design Nujood came up with, which fans will see on the MCL60 in Abu Dhabi, takes inspiration from the unique way in which Nujood interprets sound, and the impact that nature has on her hearing, representing the rolling sand dunes and sea waves of the beach.
“I found a study about architectural acoustics and how sound plays a great role in physical places such as large landscapes like fields, deserts, and beaches. Because there are no walls, sound can travel anywhere and come back to me. This was really amazing, and it inspired me.
“My art is inspired by two things, the first is my hearing impairment. The second is nature, specifically the beach. I feel like nature has a really powerful message. I combined these two inspirations together into one artwork.”
Translating artwork to a Formula 1 livery design
Our Brand Creative team have been working with Vuse helping to bring Nujood’s artwork to life. Automotive media designer Davide Virdis has been at the centre of this process, having worked on all three of the Driven By Change liveries to date.
“The closest comparison I could probably make for my role is a producer,” he explains. “We worked together with the artist and the team at McLaren to come up with a design that works on what is a very, very fast-moving object.
“There are various challenges that come from trying to turn someone’s artwork into a livery design. For example, paintings are mostly vertical, and a Formula 1 car is horizontal. Now, you can’t just take a piece of artwork and rotate it 90 degrees, it doesn’t work like that. You have to adapt and work to the parameters that you are set.”
For Davide, it’s all about balance. A large part of his role is to juggle everybody’s requirements to create a livery design that translates onto an F1 car, stays true to the artist's design, and resonates with the fans.
All are equally important to the car that ends out on track, but he says that the opportunity to “speak on behalf of these artists” gives him the greatest joy.
“It’s an honour,” he says. “You are trying to represent their work in the most respectful way possible, and for me, that is a great honour. It’s really rewarding work. Collaborating with McLaren and using this platform to work with developing artists is a lovely thing to watch happen.”
How we switched our liveries in less than a week
Work began during the race on Sunday in Las Vegas as we endeavoured to give ourselves a head start. The hefty task is the job of the Composites team, with a six-person crew sent out to Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi for the job.
And no, they weren’t applying the livery during our pit-stops or hanging off the back of the MCL60 mid-session, switching the design on the rear wing. The team worked behind the scenes in the garage to apply the livery to car parts that were not used in Vegas but might be required for Abu Dhabi.
After the race, everything was transported to Abu Dhabi, where the team’s efforts continued on Tuesday in the confines of Abu Dhabi’s, thankfully, spacious garage. Ordinarily, the Composites team would be making the change in the comfort of our UK-based home in Woking, but for this race, they’ll be working around the race team in the garage in Abu Dhabi.
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“We did consider hiring out the Bellagio, but apparently, it was a little out of our budget,” Andy laughs. “In reality, we chose to work in the garage because we needed to be on the frontline working with the race team. We don’t have the time to move parts back and forth from a separate facility in Abu Dhabi to the track.”
The two teams will work in tandem, but not always simultaneously. There will be some crossover periods, but for large parts, Andy’s team will work different hours than the race team to avoid getting in one another’s way. The garages are on the roomier side, but there’s still only a certain amount of space.
This was the first time that they’d ever attempted such a task, with all of our previous limited-edition liveries running across double-headers, with more time to apply them beforehand.
But with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix announced to follow the first Las Vegas Grand Prix, the team knew there was a chance they would need to turn a livery around quickly and have been planning and preparing for it. However, our successful Singapore upgrade has made that task somewhat more arduous.
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“It’s trial and error,” Andy says. “All the parts were already trackside, so we’ve had nothing representative to practise on. We’ve done plenty of practise on the show car, but the bodywork parts are different to the latest and greatest MCL60 following the upgrade installed in Singapore.
“The artwork was designed to be projected onto the car, but it isn’t an exact science, and it isn’t like doing a normal livery where you know what size everything should be, exactly where it should go and how it should be done.
“You can plan for this as much as you like, but it isn’t quite the same without the real thing in front of you. The practice we’ve done isn’t a fruitless task, though, because it gives us plenty of learnings. It will require the team to think on their feet, but they will step up to this type of challenge, and we'll do whatever it takes to deliver.”
And of course, there will be a significant sense of achievement once the job is completed, and they see the MCL60 firing around the Yas Marina Circuit.
“The reward is when you see the car on the circuit after you’ve worked your socks off,” he says. “Every time we do a livery change, there is such a big impact, and it is so rewarding for the team when you’ve got family and friends watching the livery you’ve worked on. That, and the feedback on social media, shows that your efforts were not in vain.”
Davide agrees: “Seeing it on the TV [is rewarding]. I grew up dreaming about cars, and I still dream of cars now, I wouldn’t be doing this job if I didn’t. It’s a great feeling.”