The 2022 Formula 1 World Championship has undergone one of the ‘most drastic’ changes to the regulations and the teams have had to implement these modifications in their cars. In Mercedes’ case, apart from the change of the large front air intake for a narrower, One of the things that has attracted the most attention is that they have recovered the silver color. They have gone from black to silver, a common color in the team and by which the cars are called ‘silver or silver arrows’. And it all goes back to 1934where this color was ‘born’.
The Mercedes team boss in 1934, Alfred Neubauer invented a resource for single-seaters to lose weight: scratch the paint. At that time, the Mercedes car exceeded the maximum weight. The German cars were white, the French blue, the English were green, etc. until in this year, Neubauer decided to scratch his cars and remove the white paint to give the weight of 750 kilos which gave rise to the birth of the ‘silver arrows’. Gray (metallic) was the color of the chassis. Manfred von Brauchitsch won the Eifelrennen in 1934 in a Mercedes W25.
In the 2022 World Cup, it has been seen how the color black was gaining ground in several single-seaters, such as that of McLaren. This color is that of the carbon fiber of the cars, when sanding the paint this tone appears to be able to approach the 798 kilos (the minimum weight that single-seaters must have according to the FIA regulations).
Sanding the color lightens the weight and could be around 6 kilos. On McLarenfor example, the technical director, Andy Green He explained that “they didn’t paint part of the pontoons and the rear wing to save 350 grams”. On Red Bull the color of carbon fiber has been seen in the advertising of the front spoiler and the sides seem raw, as in Williams, while in Alpine the pink color is lost in the rear and rear fairing.