SILVERSTONE, England — You might need to look twice to spot the McLarens at Silverstone.
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Instead of their usual luminous “papaya” orange, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s cars are white with a green stripe in a throwback livery for this week’s British Grand Prix .
It’s a design copied from the first McLaren Formula 1 car, the M2B of 1966, in a year when the team marks its 1,000th race. However, the colors first belonged to a team which never actually existed.
Almost 60 years before Brad Pitt suited up in black and gold for APX GP in the “F1” movie , James Garner starred in 1966’s “Grand Prix” as Pete Aron, a driver for the fictional Japanese team Yamura.
In a pioneering crossover between F1 and Hollywood, the fledgling McLaren team painted its cars in Yamura’s colors so that driver and team founder Bruce McLaren could be Garner’s double.
The movie was famed for its raw on-track action footage, with the McLaren prominently featured, and it won three Oscars for its cutting-edge editing and sound.
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“It’s special because it’s Bruce’s first car. So it feels more like just an honor that we get to relive this, bring it back to life, and also showcase it, because not many people know that the first car Bruce had was the white, green and grey,” Norris said Thursday.
“It’s just cool that I’m one of the drivers that gets to relive that and throw it back to the beginning of the McLaren story, which is something very special.”
Back in 1966, a movie-inspired livery was ground-breaking. A sponsored livery wouldn’t appear on a car in an F1 world championship race until the 1968 season.
Most teams raced in designated national colors such as red for Italian teams like Ferrari, “British Racing Green”, or blue for France. Since Bruce McLaren was a New Zealander, his team might have been expected to use green, black and silver.
F1’s newest team has a special appearance this weekend, too. Cadillac has a red, white and blue look — with a matching American flag helmet for Valtteri Bottas — to mark July 4 and the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence from Britain.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
