The rules:
1 livery from each season
No team repeats from 1 year to the next.
Some years have cars that don't deserve to be listed with the others, but that'll be sorted out in an article later (stay tuned)
Without further a due...
2010 BMW Sauber
Imagine you put this livery on a Honda Civic. Driving down the road, you'd be worried that truck drivers were were falling asleep looking at the back of the car. The lines clash with the natural figure of the car, the red doesn't really pop because there's too little, and the result is a white and gray mash of a livery.
2011 Toro Rosso
This car livery looks ripped out of F1 2011 the game's custom livery mode. Gigantic spray-paint look logo with dull colors and a lack of flow between one element to the next. What differentiates it from its partner team in Red Bull is the lack of discretion with which elements are thrown onto the car. Red bull separates their logos with white borders and adjusts logos to fit the car rather than sizing them by choice. Also, a drink can on the side of the rear wing, really?
2012 Marussia
Christmas stockings anyone? The peppermint candy cane look did not fly well for the Russian outfit in 2012. I'm on record as a fan of both the team's progress and drivers during this season (lookup any race review and I bet you Bianchi (Rest in Peace) is mentioned at least once). The diagonal lines up the car doesnt help it look symmetrical either. Imagine that look on even a Ferrari would look make it out of place on a track. The car itself showed promise, but the livery itself had nowhere to go but up.
2013 Caterham
Why, oh why did they change the color green for this season? Especially coupled with the sunshine yellow on the side it makes it look more like its sponsored by an off-brand Sprite ripoff. The Caterham liveries of old were beautiful in their simplicity, but this one just chucked that one away for little innovative gain in return.
2014 Lotus
Year after year, Lotus tried to reinvent the wheel. 2012 was their best livery, and every time until their rebranding after, they tried one solution to make it new: more red. And not just red, bright firetruck red. The strength of the john player/lotus look was its subtlety. Blocky words and understated frames. This one is loud and distracting while marooning text up and down the car. The design car of this car is actually quite cute in its own way, but the combo of firetruck red and classic design with tons of lettering; not so much.
2015 McLaren
Trying my best not to repeat here, and a special dishonorable mention needs to go out to Sauber for their opaque blue ensemble. However, for a car with such a great history of good-looking cars, McLaren let the ball hit the ground as their unveiled the MP4-30. The previous car had sleekness and simplicity in its new-era minimalist design. The new McLaren had an unconfident approach towards the orange car without any real direction. By combining the two they ended up with a grey car and an orange stripe around the nose. Not pretty, McLaren.
2016 Renault
You've heard of hammer time, now prepare yourself for banana time. What Renault were thinking on their debut season is unclear, as they unleashed a bright yellow vehicle that looked more like a toy car. With the french flag and the combos of yellow and black to play with, Renault's designers had a lot of routes to go down. However, in the end they settled on a block colored machine that looks unfinished and lazy.
2017 Haas
The little American team that could had a strong showing in its first few seasons in F1, but had some teething problems with its color scheme. Though this isn't as bad as the rest, the combo of lifeless grey, dull red and white just sort of sits on the car. It makes it unmemorable and less than flashy even in the heat of racing. If liveries are designed to bring attention to the car, this one failed at it.
2018 McLaren
Alright, we concede. The first repeat comes from an unlikely source in McLaren. Liveries have certainly got better over the years, and 2018 was a good one, but in a year where teams like Sauber and Toro Rosso took a massive step forward, McLaren took a step back. Again, F1 cars are designed to keep your eye on them and to sell sponsors. Instead McLaren picked two shades off the color wheel and splashed them on. They've had some great liveries over the years, but this is not one of them.
2019 Racing Point
Racing Point suffered the Lotus treatment in 2019 where they ran out of room on their own livery. With the shocking reveal of the pink livery two years earlier, Force India broke new ground in the world of Formula 1 liveries. However, this year the sponsors rolled in, and the space got tight. Similar to the assessment of the Lotus above, the Force India had a charm because of how stark a direct contrast it was to the rest of the grid. The shallow pink allowed it to stand out without being aggressive towards the eyes. However, this year, they shattered that by throwing in a glossy blue air-box that disrupts the cleanliness of the entire look. Not the worst on the list, but not good either
2020 Williams
Some have compared it to toothpaste. Some, to a candy bowl. And some, to a GP2 car. All are likely fair assessments of Williams 2020 outfit for the so-far-so-gone season of 2020. While never seeing the cars in real action makes it harder to tell how they look, this one takes the bottom as the clean sleekness of the 2019 car was replaced with what looks like 2 cars smashed together. 3 colors is not the worst thing for an F1 car, but the distance between the white, red, and sky blue parts of the car make it feel like a 3-in-one to-go box.
Thanks for reading! Hope you all are safe in this difficult times.
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