Ferrari's 'Blue' Miami F1 Livery Sure Doesn't Look All That Blue

Image: Ferrari

Ferrari unveiled an off-one special livery for the Miami Grand Prix that has left Formula 1 fans universally underwhelmed. The venerated Italian brand will be running its traditional red race cars with added splashes of blue and new Hewlett-Packard logos. It’s undeniable that expectations were high last week when Ferrari teased that it would race a livery to commemorate the 70th anniversary of its presence in North America.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari Is A Great Car Movie

Photo: Ferrari

Ferrari’s announcement last week mentioned blue and North America, which led everyone to immediately assume that the F1 team was preparing a North American Racing Team (NART) tribute livery. NART was created by Luigi Chinetti, the businessman who convinced Enzo Ferrari to sell his cars in the United States during the 1950s. The racing team was initially conceived as a marketing tool but became a force of its own in the American sports car racing scene.

Photo: Bernard Cahier (Getty Images)

In F1, NART was also the protest moniker that Scuderia Ferrari raced under when John Surtees clinched the world championship in 1964. The FIA, the sport’s global governing body, refused to allow Ferarri to race the 250 LM in competiton. The Automobile Club d’Italia didn’t support the manufacturer’s case so Enzo Ferrari brazenly declared that Ferrari would never race in Italy’s colors again. Ferrari putting on NART’s American colors again would be timely, considering the paddock’s current conflict with the FIA.

This narrative proved alluring enough for even the official Formula 1 website to feature a photo of John Surtees’ NART blue and white Ferrari 158 alongside last week’s announcement. This hopeful speculation happened despite Ferrari being completely transparent about what two shades of blue were getting put on the car, Azzurro La Plata and Azzurro Dino. These colors have no significant ties to NART.

Photo: Ferrari

What we all ignored was Ferrari’s new title sponsorship deal with HP, its first naming rights deal since ending a decades-long partnership with Phillip Morris International. I understand that ink and toner don’t carry the same addictive quality as tobacco, but we should have known that Ferrari would make us all aware that they’re a tech billboard now. We dared to dream and once again got let down by HP.