Every 2026 Formula 1 Livery, Ranked From Worst To Best

It’s nearly time for the kick-off of the 2026 Formula 1 World Championship, and following the fanfare-filled launch of the Cadillac team’s new car during the Super Bowl, plus a fanfare-free launch of the McLaren MCL40 on Monday, all of the teams are now accounted for. At least visually, that is. With just a private test session to go from, which didn’t even feature all of the teams, the performance of an all-new chassis with an all-new set of engine regulations is kind of a crap shoot until they hit qualifying in Melbourne next month.

A full ten years ago a new American team was added to the grid, increasing the number of teams from 10 to 11. Back then it was Haas, but this year the same thing is happening with Cadillac. It’s like poetry, it rhymes. 

One could argue that Formula 1 has never been stronger, with new manufacturer superpowers being added in the form of Cadillac and Audi, plus the return of Ford and Honda as engine suppliers with the Red Bull teams and Aston Martin respectively, and Toyota doubling down on its relationship with Haas. All of that, and Ferrari and Mercedes look stronger than perhaps they ever have. It’s going to be a season for the ages. 

Since we can’t judge these cars based on their performance just yet, we’re going to have to settle for judging them on their appearance. With all of the 2026 liveries now accounted for, here’s how we would rank them.  

I had high hopes for Cadillac in its first year on the Formula 1 grid. The Cadillac sports cars look absolutely resplendent in a variety of bold colorways, and I had hoped perhaps the gold livery would work its way over to F1. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas will be driving around at the back of the pack in the most boring-looking black and white cars to ever grace the F1 grid. 

The Cadillac script is a nice touch just in front of the driver, and I like that the livery is asymmetrical with the right side of the car showing the negative of the left. That said, the team couldn’t even find a title sponsor, and has to be saddled with TWG AI. In case you didn’t know, TWG Global is the holdings company that owns TWG Motorsport, which itself owns Andretti Global and the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. 

The sponsor on the sidepod, TWG AI, is a partnership between TWG Global and Palantir Technologies, created with the intent of developing commercial AI tools for financial services companies. To muddy the waters even more, TWG Global owns Group 1001 insurance, whose CEO Dan Towriss, is also the CEO of TWG Motorsport. The company’s logo should just be one hand with nine fingers washing the other with six. 

The Visa Cash App Racing Bulls haven’t exactly gone far afield with the livery work in 2026, as it looks more or less exactly as it has for the last several seasons. It’s not ugly, I guess, despite being a bit cluttered. I just wish it weren’t white. White is such a boring color for a race car. Red Bull is supposed to be an action sports brand in the fastest motorsport on the planet, so why does it look so bland? 

Liam Lawson is keeping his spot for 2026, now joined by rookie Arvid Lindblad, so at least the team has a somewhat exciting lineup. Assuming Red Bull got its sums right, the junior team will probably be a bit further behind the “senior” RB team this year than it was last year. Time will tell where it shakes out, but I’d bet on the back half of the field, for sure. 

Red Bull has four cars on the grid, so why can’t they manage to put together a livery that offers something interesting on any of them? Slightly better than the Racing Bulls, the big brother RB at least eschews white for black/carbon fiber, and leans heavier into the blue. There are so many better ways to do this, but this is what they chose, so here it is. I wish I had better news. 

Max Verstappen will be joined by Isack Hadjar in 2026, and you can probably expect a bit more of the same from Red Bull this year. The car will be built to suit Max, the team will blame Isack for not being faster, and they’ll lose ground in the championship across the season. With all of the turmoil of 2025 behind them, hopefully the new team can put together a valiant effort and keep Ferrari and Mercedes from running away with it all. 

It’s just testing, but Ferrari managed to top the time sheets during the first five-day test at Barcelona. Maybe if the team had put together a more impressive livery, it could convince me that it’s a front runner in 2026. I’ve fallen for that bit a few too many times in the last decade, so I’m not ready to believe that Ferrari have pace until at least a few races into the season. I want to see Sir Lewis Hamilton do well again, but this year, in addition to Horse Team shenanigans, he’ll also be facing down the Kardashian Curse. 

Ferrari has, in recent years, used a darker and more luxurious shade of red for its livery, but that seems to be gone now with a return to the violent and bright version of Rosso Corsa. Now outfitted with a big white airbox, clad with the bright blue Hewlett-Packard logo, the car at least has a splash of another color onboard. It’s certainly better integrated than last year’s car, with the white giving a bit of the Schumacher-era Marlboro look, or reminiscent of the white cockpit area of Niki Lauda’s 312T2 of fifty years prior. 

It could be better, but it’s definitely been worse.

Mercedes is largely keeping everything the same as it was in 2026, from the driver lineup to team management, a rarity on the grid this year. Considering the team found two wins and twelve podiums in 2025, firmly cementing itself as the “best of the rest” it makes sense to keep as much the same as possible, especially while the chassis and engine rulebook got blown up and completely replaced. Mercedes allegedly has an engine advantage that none of the other manufacturers could replicate, so maybe 2026 already belongs to Brackley? 

Mercedes is keeping things relatively the same in the livery department for this year, too. The black, silver, and teal livery is back. I’d be putting this way further down the list if it didn’t have the well-defined Petronas teal swoop on it. A bold color choice to split up the greyscale makes this a bit better ranked than it likely should be. What can I say, I’m a sucker for teal. 

Aston Martin has made some missteps with its livery in the past, going with a British Racing Green that was too dark on television to be differentiated from black. It appears that for 2026 that has changed. Not only is the green a brighter shade, but the team has incorporated more of the bright green/yellow accent that Aston Martin Racing has leaned into on its sports car efforts. 

The baby blue rear wing element for its Aramco title sponsor, however, doesn’t fit the scheme. It’ll be instantly recognizable on television, though, so for that I’m thankful. Also, putting Glenfiddich on the front wing endplates is just so delightfully James Bond Aston Martin Core. 

Sadly, Aston has probably the worst driver pairing on the grid. It hurts me to say this as a devout Fernando Alonso fan, but he’s past his World Championship days unless Adrian Newey has put together a real rocketship for him. Teammate Lance Stroll, meanwhile, is a nepo baby billionaire who never had the makings of a World Drivers’ Champion anyway, and wouldn’t know what to do with a Newey chassis if it bit him. 

Another horrible boring red/black/white livery, but this time a bit more exciting with a giant Gazoo Racing logo adorning the airbox and sharkfin area of the car. Toyota Gazoo Racing joined up with Haas, acting as something of a consultant role in 2025. For 2026, however, the Japanese brand’s racing arm has come onboard as title sponsor and technical partner. 

Haas has now completed ten tumultuous seasons in F1. Thus far the team has not managed to even luck their way onto a single podium. Across all ten of the seasons Haas has existed, the team has scored a scant 386 points in total. If the team had been allowed to bank all of its points for ten seasons and put them all down on the 2025 season, it would have finished fifth in the world constructor’s championship, behind McLaren (833 points), Mercedes (469 points), Red Bull Racing (451 points) and Ferrari (398 points). 

Here’s hoping Toyota bring an extra level of competence to Haas in 2026 and the team starts racking up some podiums. 

Yo listen up, here’s a story: It’s about a little team that lives in a blue world. And all day and all night and everything the team sees is just blue. Like itself. Inside and outside. 

Once again, I am in love with a team that chooses to use some color in its livery. There’s a dark blue, a pale blue, an even bolder dark blue, and some purple, which is kind of like blue. And, because I always appreciate some whimsy to a design, the Duracell battery air intake box is back for 2026. I loved it last year, I love it even more this year. 

Williams has had a rough start to the 2026 season, missing the initial test in Barcelona because the car wasn’t done yet. The new FW48, as it sits, is about 10 pounds over the minimum weight requirements of the rulebook, so it’s probably a bit too heavy to be seriously competitive, but stranger things have happened. Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon are a talented-if-unlucky driver pairing, and Sainz even managed to grab two podium finishes in 2025. If the car is even close to being there this year, expect these two to extract more out of it. 

Much like Mercedes using teal to break up the silver and black, German counterpart Audi has gone for a silver and black livery with a whole lot of bright red/orange accents and wide swatches of the same red/orange toward the rear of the car. Somehow Audi have gone for a more eye-catching shade of silver than Mercedes as well. This is a rather fetching race car. I wish there was more of the bold color than just a swoop and some accents, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look as classy as they’re trying to make it look. 

Title sponsor Revolut is the most valuable fin-tech company in Europe. It’s more or less a digital bank, offering all of the typical features of a bank, including interest-bearing accounts, without any of the branches. It’s looking to expand to the U.S. market in 2026, and being the title sponsor of an F1 team will probably do wonders for brand recognition in America. 

The 2025 World Champions haven’t really changed much about the look of their livery for 2026. Obviously, if it ain’t broke, there’s no sense in fixing it. The Papaya looks good on a McLaren and I’m always going to be in favor of a bright color like this one on the grid. There’s a bit too much black in this for it to be the best on the grid, though. As with previous years, the Google Chrome rainbow on the wheel covers is inspired and should never go away. Gemini, Google’s AI brand, however can pound sand. 

The driver pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri provided most of the drama in 2025, and if these two can’t agree on when and where they should be scrapping for points, it could lead to disappointment in 2026. Team Boss Zak Brown is committing many of the same errors his predecessor, Ron Dennis did. All of the best teams have a solid number one driver and a compliant number two driver. McLaren has two number ones. 

Come on, it had to be Alpine. Any team that can brilliantly pair blue and pink is going to get my vote. BWT is the best thing to happen to F1 in a decade, because that corporate pink just looks so great on anything built to go this fast. Tack on the six-legged fire-breathing dog that makes up oil company Eni’s logo, and you’ve got a real winner here. It’s the best livery on the grid by a mile. I love it so much. 

Alpine is stepping away from its uncompetitive Renault powertrains for 2026, deciding instead to purchase Mercedes-AMG powertrains. With the Mercedes already proving quick and reliable, Alpine was fifth fastest, just a tick behind Max Verstappen and Red Bull on the fifth day of running. Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto have their work cut out for them if they want to join the proper front of the grid in 2026, though. The team only managed five points-paying finishes last season, and hasn’t seen a race victory since Hungary in 2021.