text: planetf1.com • View topic - Racing Colours, what happened to them?
  Racing Colours, what happened to them?
  Post subject: Racing Colours, what happened to them?
  Every time when I watch old F1 races, their colors seem to glow(looks brighter) a lot more nicer than it is today. Did they stop making the colours on F1 cars as good as before? If you compare a benetton or a mclaren from the late 80s the colours look much more brighter than a ferrari f2012. Even the Benetton in the 90s and Williams look so much cooler back then. So did F1 teams decided to do something with the colours after 00'? I can't help but wonder they look better before than now
  Post subject: Re: Racing Colours, what happened to them?
  Much of that may be due to the differences in film technology. Most of it was on actual film strip and had to be 'remastered' on to digital media and was cleaned up during the process.
  Maybe the darker background lets the sponsors logo stand out more?
  Although McLaren are the exception. Can't get any brighter than full reflective paint.
  Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:08 am
  I remember reading a while ago that when Jaguar entered F1 they chose to make their car lighter than British racing green because actual racing green showed up far darker on TV. The lighter colour looked more like racing green to TV viewers.
  I'm not an expert on TVs, but I wonder if that inaccurate reproduction of colour has not actually always been the case, hence older cars might look better. Just a thought.
  Incidentally, I'm always quite surprised how different F1 cars look in the flesh compared to on TV.
  British racing green is pretty dark anyway, the jaguar green looked like pea green and a little fairy cakes!
  All about sponsor/partnership colors these days apart from McLaren/Ferrari which both are pretty bright.
  The contrast was higher on older TV's also which gives the impression if watching on TV that the cars where brighter (Like explained above)
  If you have a good TV and HD, then you get a good representation of how the cars look in real life.
  I regret you can't see much of the car numbers on todays F1 cars. In the past it was so easy to see the number so I knew immediately whose car was shown. Today I cannot always tell who is who just by the helmet. Helmet designs of the drivers change also much more than in the past. In the past they drove with the same design like their whole career.
  Excellent point Amon. I totally agree. I am partly colourblind and have a dickens of a time telling who's car is who's. Some are obvious, but not all and the numbers would look good I think.
  Yes, totally agreed. It's weird, too, because there is a lot of merchandising in F1 these days and an awful lot of it prominently focuses on car number - displayed in big fonts on T-shirts or the side of baseball caps, etc. It's much easier to tell a driver's number by looking at their clothes than at their car! You'd have thought if they wanted to 'sell' the number, then they might want to make it a bit clearer on the car.
  What's wrong with a nice big number on the rear wing and on the front of the car? McLaren are at least still legible - pretty well using the same font and size as ever.
  Sidiclei wrote:
  Big numbers take up valuable advertising space.
  In the 80's (as the sport grew tremendously) the numbers shrank.
  Yeah, I've only been to one live race but I couldn't believe how bright the Ferrari looked in the flesh...and this was on a dark and rainy Silverstone Friday!