Red Bull cancels custom livery plans for Singapore
Red Bull Racing has scrapped plans to run a special livery this weekend at the Singapore Grand Prix. The news was confirmed to competition winners just days before the car was due to race.
The RB20 was due to be running in the second of three planned one-off designs from the team’s REBL CUSTMS competition that saw fans enter their liveries, with winning entrants having the chance to see their designs racing at the British, Singapore and US Grands Prix.
Max Verstappen finished second at Silverstone with the first winning livery, but plans to run the remaining two competition winners have been cancelled, with the team citing concerns about the additional weight of repainting its cars.
It’s hardly surprising, as Red Bull is in the midst of a major decline in performance, that it would be reluctant to further compromise the speed of its cars, even to the degree of a few grams of additional paint.
A lot has changed in Formula 1 since Verstappen won seven of the first ten races and looked set to cruise to a fourth consecutive world championship. Since then, Red Bull has lost the lead in the constructors’ standings to McLaren, and Verstappen has gone on his longest winless run since 2020.
There’s sure to be plenty of tension within the team this weekend, too, as we return to the scene of Red Bull’s inexplicable blip that blew the chance of a clean sweep in 2023. What was a minor inconvenience last year has become a serious concern in 2024.
On current form, Red Bull is set to lose the world championship this season, and the team is rightly prioritising that fact rather than appeasing the fans which will be rightly disappointed that their designs won’t be used.
It could be construed as a team in a panicked crisis, but in such a competitive season where eight cars are in contention for victory weekend after weekend, every thousandth of a second is going to count.
The team’s full statement read: “Thank you so much for entering the REBL CUSTMS Livery Competition. Once again, the designs showed ingenuity and a progressive thinking that has come to be the benchmark, as our fan-designed livery campaigns have evolved over the past two years.
“Unfortunately, when we came to the testing phase of what some REBL CUSTMS designs could look like in real life, on the RB20, we found the paint used to create these bespoke, full car takeover liveries, added unforeseen and undue weight to the bodywork of the RB20.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, any additional weight compromises performance and the Team are continuing to prioritise making this car as competitive as possible for the remainder of the 2024 season. As a result, it is with a heavy heart that we must let you know the Team has made the decision to not run the REBL CUSTMS liveries on the RB20 at the Singapore and United States GPs.”
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.
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