F1 | Williams: an all-Gulf one-off livery can become a reality

Gulf left McLaren and joined Williams. Today, at the British team’s headquarters in Grove, the oil marque made its first appearance on a Williams.

The team has unveiled the 2023 livery that will dress the FW45s starting from the shakedown scheduled for February 13th at Silverstone. Few differences with that of 2022: it is in fact an evolution, but the novelty was precisely the presence of Gulf.

The brand appears just in front of one of the three halo attachments to the body, a few centimeters from the passenger compartment. Not only that, because it has also found a place on the bulkheads of the rear wing, in an elegant but “naked” livery, which features a small number of sponsors.

Over the past few years Gulf has sponsored McLaren, also giving a very nice livery to the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix. The cars of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris ran fully dressed in Gulf colors, with a light blue base and the classic orange vertical stripe in the middle of.

The partnership between Williams and Gulf is only just beginning, but when asked by Motorsport.com about a similar livery for Williams, Gulf chief executive Mike James said: “Of course, whatever we do in the future it will have to be bigger and better than what has been done before”.

“We have a lot of Gulf fans around the world and have a lot of requests for our livery. We want our livery to be special. We are also rolling out a number of fan-focused activation plans. We always find Gulf to be a favorite sponsor by the fans and we want the fans to be part of our reality.”

“So of course we are studying different solutions for that. We will let our plans be known in the near future,” concluded James.

Williams’ commercial director, James Bower, admitted that the Grove team is studying a series of initiatives to be launched with the full involvement of Gulf.

“We have agreed a full season presence, and you saw that today,” he said at the team’s livery launch.
“We think it will be very effective. You’ve just seen the car, but there are other points of contact across the team.”

“You can think of the key moments of a race [weekend], like, of course, the fuel supply, which ties into the partnership and pit crew and a few other components. So we’re very focused on how we take these iconic assets and bring them to life.”

“As Mike said, there is the potential for these elements to become an integral part of a wider fan activation. So what you saw today is just the beginning and you will see more as the team drops. on track and will actually be operational during the season”.