McLaren will run a full Ayrton Senna livery at the Monaco Grand Prix in tribute to its most successful driver at the iconic race.
Senna won in Monaco on a record six occasions, with five of those for McLaren and coming in consecutive years from 1989-1993. The Brazilian is also the team’s most successful driver with 35 victories, and 30 years on from his death McLaren has opted to introduce a complete yellow, green and blue livery – echoing Senna’s helmet design in the colors of the Brazilian national flag – for this weekend’s race in Monte Carlo.
The project has been carried out in collaboration with Senna Global and McLaren’s sponsor OKX, and also includes a one-off edition of the McLaren Senna road car that has been hand painted. The entire team will also wear special Senna clothing throughout the race weekend, with only the pit crew remaining unchanged to ensure continuity for the drivers.
“The team is proud to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary life and racing legacy of Ayrton Senna through this McLaren livery,” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said. “Senna remains revered and respected as Formula 1’s greatest icon, and McLaren’s most decorated driver.
“His impact on McLaren is enormous, not only through his racing record but also presence within the team, and now his legacy, so it’s an honor to race for him at his most successful circuit in his green, yellow and blue colors.”
Bianca Senna, Ayrton’s niece and the head of Senna Global, was present throughout the Imola weekend and says the Monaco livery is a celebration of one of the most successful phases of his life.
“It’s an honor to recognize Ayrton through these liveries in collaboration with both McLaren Racing and McLaren Automotive,” Senna said. “It’s a fantastic way to celebrate his life and legacy through his iconic colors on both cars. McLaren meant a lot to him, and together they achieved a lot of success, much of which he is still remembered for today by so many. It will be special to see it race the streets of Monaco, a circuit which gave him so much joy and many triumphs.”
McLaren’s chief marketing officer Louise McEwen says the livery has been a long time in the planning and felt right to only run at Monaco rather than Imola too, despite the logistical challenge of changing the car’s color scheme on the road in a small gap between races.
“The livery has been in the making for well over a year now,” McEwen said. “Hopefully you can see the design inspiration behind the car and those beautiful, bright, vibrant colors. That inspiration really comes from celebrating McLaren’s most successful grand prix driver ever in Senna, winning 35 of his 41 grand prix wins with us, which is an incredible legacy.
“It’s an absolutely full swap out. We’ll be swapping both chassis out in the field – the cars don’t come back to the MTC – with a team of six that come out from the MTC to deliver that. It has to be delivered with absolutely integrity around performance, so we’re definitely not compromising that.
“We always focused on Monaco because this is a celebration of his life. We feel that going into Imola we knew that the whole Formula 1 community would be paying their respects to Ayrton … It’s that reflection and remembrance and an opportunity to bring those memories to life of the driver and who he was.
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“It would have been much easier to run the livery across both races but we fundamentally didn’t feel that was right to do. As a team we’re always pushing the boundaries, so we wouldn’t have done it if we couldn’t achieve it, but everyone was happy to do that swap in the field.
“The front wheel covers have very purposely remained papaya. When we do a livery swap of this extent – a full wrap of the car – obviously we can’t compromise performance in any way. And we’ve worked over the last year with the whole of racing, particularly the aero team and then trackside operations, to make sure that we don’t compromise performance. So those elements haven’t changed, they’re important cues for our drivers.”
