Renault reveals yellow race livery for RS16

2016 F1 season

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Renault has revealed the yellow livery its RS16 will race in this year.

The French manufacturer, which has returned to F1 competition as a full team this season, used a black livery during testing.

The new livery was displayed on a show car at a launch in Melbourne on Wednesday.

Renault’s 2016 livery marks a return to the team running in its corporate colours, as its original F1 team did from 1977 to 1985 and as its most recent F1 outfit did for a single season in 2010.

“The black and yellow Sirius colours themselves are naturally the corporate colours of Renault Sport but also share the heritage of Renault Sport on track,” said team principal Cyril Abiteboul.

The first-ever Renault F1 car, the RS01, hit the track in yellow and black in 1977 and this latest livery is a nod to this formidable car. To create much more tangible links between Renault Sport Cars and Renault Sport Racing, we have also used colours to showcase the matt white colour available on the Renault Clio RS Trophy.”

“We have added some contemporary touches to make the RS16 stand out,” Abiteboul added. “We have used metallic colours that will reflect the lights at the night races, the ‘diamond’ pattern at the rear of the car fits in with our new brand identity and the gold flashes signify we aim for the top.”

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Renault RS16 livery launch pictures

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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113 comments on “Renault reveals yellow race livery for RS16”

  1. At last, more colour on the grid! This car looks fabulous.

    1. More colour yes this makes it 7 different base colours across 11 teams, 6 if you count Merc as silver instead of grey. Cannot be complaints about the colour mix unless someone thinks it’s an outrage we do not have a Green car.

    2. 2 different noses on pics

      1. There’s two completely different cars in the pics, and they’re both very different from what they were actually testing in Barcelona. Look at the picture that shows the rear of the “promo car”. Looks horrible, it’s completely asymmetrical and doesn’t have the smaller exhaust pipe next to the big one at all.
        Here’s the real car’s rear: http://goo.gl/B2Iz2d
        And here’s the “promo” car rear: http://goo.gl/0442Hl

        Also, the nose is completely different on both of these cars compared to what they were testing in Barcelona.
        Here’s the Barcelona nose, notice how the top surface of the nose is flat and straight, and how the front wing mounts to it: http://goo.gl/80PAiB
        Here’s the event car nose, notice how rounded the top surface is and how it curves down to its tip: http://goo.gl/bhRUyW
        Here’s the promo car nose, it’s flat and straight but the tip and front wing mounts are completely different: http://goo.gl/RZcsuO

        1. Well the front nose used in the formal photo shoot, is evidently the nose they tested in Austin (2014). This was most likely gifted along with an older chassis to the marketing team for the livery launch. Expect the full race car with the nose used in testing to be racing on Sunday.

      2. ColdFly F1 (@)
        16th March 2016, 15:21

        first one is a model used for this video

        1. @kepe @coldfly
          It actually seems to be a 2005 car?! Look at the rear part of the sidepods with those horizontal edges sticking out of the sidepod, as well as those mean-looking gills. The nose is a dead giveaway – it’s what got me suspicious. They might have just attached new-spec wings to it, and took off excess pre-2009 winglets, but it looks like something from 2005-2008 era.

      3. @kepe @coldfly
        I was told the car in the video, so the one in the presentation, is a R26 (from 2006) but it might be a R27. I don’t think it’s the 2005 car.
        But they cleaned-up the winglets and seemed to been using a recent rear wing.

        I have however a “bigger issue” with the one from the rendered images or photo shoot. They put the label RS16 but as Rafe said it’s clearly not a RS16. The nose is definitely similar to the one the team (known as Lotus back then) tested in Austin 2014 so I went to compare with the Lotus E22 and almost everything fits, sidepods wings and small shark fin included. I had previously ruled the E22 (the previous Enstone made car with a Renault engine) out due to the double tusk nose and did not remember about the nose tested in Austin.
        That was a good spotting from Rafe.

    3. Indeed, the car is gorgeous!

    4. knoxploration
      16th March 2016, 16:26

      Agreed, finally a team has some guts and goes with a bold color. That’s the most attractive F1 car I’ve seen in years!

    5. Apex Assassin
      16th March 2016, 18:32

      Best yellow livery ever.

  2. Love it. Just love it. Proper Renault yellow, no fag-packet blue or ghastly ING mess. Nice one Renault.

    1. I agree! Love it.

      On closer inspection. It seems to be sponsored by a certain butcher from Dad’s Army…

      1. I hated that ING livery. And I work for ING.

    2. @keithcollantine While I like the colour, the livery itself is incredibly dull. Like it was done on MS Paint: a bucket of yellow and sponsors in Arial Narrow. This is very far from the glorious livery used in 2010.

      At least it’ll be easy to see on track!

      1. I respectfully dissagree, this is much better than the 2010 livery. It is clean and slick but still manages not to be dull thanks to the mat finish. In this case I really think less is more.

        1. Can’t see the excitement. Matte finish is intrinsically boring for me, and there’s nothing in the livery appart from the colour that really stands out.

          A white or black line here and there would’ve made a hell of a difference, but this is just a completely yellow car. Appart from the yellow, there’s no hint to any of Renault’s heritage liveries. It’s more Jordan than Renault!

          1. @fer-no65 While I agree the car looks a bit bland(though still nice) I absolutely cannot agree there’s no hint of Renault previous liveries. Which liveries you speak of? The definitive, original Renault was all yellow so you cannot be more historic than that. Other colors added later are all sponsors colors. I agree that a touch more black around the cockpit area would’ve made it even more beautiful. But it’s nice as it is. Matte yellow looks cool and at least it’s not white

          2. @fer-no65

            Appart from the yellow, there’s no hint to any of Renault’s heritage liveries.

            Not that they needed any more hints than the yellow (and a bit of black in case you can’t see it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_RS01 (Wow did anyone design an F1 car he/she raced him/herself after Jean-Pierre Jabouille?)

          3. @montreal95 @davidnotcoulthard

            Renault colours are not yellow. It’s yellow, black and white, as seen in their Le Mans racers aswell as the rally cars.

            This one, while it’s matte yellow and has a bit of black, is a lot more Jordan than Renault. Also, it doesn’t look as bright as the previous liveries. This is neat-picking, I know, but in general I don’t think this is a particularly good livery.

            It’s a good colour, and it’ll stand out from the rest of the cars, which is great. But it’s not a good livery for me. I prefered the 2010 one, for sure!

            A controvertial comment, I know, given how well received this new colour scheme has been so far! :P

          4. @fer-no65 Well I guess I can see how the 2010 livery was better.

            I’d actually love to see team Enstone use a matte version of the 2010 livery (though I guess you disagree with that).

        2. Agree completely. The 2010 “scorched hot dog” livery was a mess, frankly.

      2. @fer-no65
        I must ask, where do you see Arial? :)
        There’s literally none of it on the car. :)

        1. I’m not a font expert :P I used to paint those cars in MS Paint with Arial text as sponsors :P

      3. @fer-no65 I agree with you when you say it’s dulll… It is an improvment to see diferent colours on the grid, but one still can’t say it is a colorfull or vibrant livery…

    3. I too love it. Actually I liked their black testing livery too.

      1. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
        16th March 2016, 14:49

        I also think its a great job. I had an inkling they would just straight swap the colours after saying the ‘elegance’ of the testing livery would remain, and I’m glad they did. As much as I loved 2010s bumblebee, it was a little bit too busy (sort of fitting really).

        I wonder will we see a yellow Renault e-dams formula e car in the coming weeks?

    4. The Blade Runner (@)
      16th March 2016, 12:29

      Agree. It looks fabulous. Eye-catching but not tacky.

    5. and no red TOTAL paintwork anywhere!

      1. fortunately no purple from Infinity either

    6. Sviatoslav (@)
      16th March 2016, 15:37

      no fag-packet blue

      – if I only were British, I would understand this:-D
      Fully agree, this is the best livery of all.

      1. fag packet, meaning cigarette packet

  3. Brilliant! I really liked the 2010 Renault, I wish this one was also a combination of yellow and black, but it’s still lovely. Best on the grid.

  4. Very, very nice – great job Renault. A beacon in a grid of grey. Wish I’d seen this at the last test in Barcelona!

  5. Yeah! That’s more like it :D

    1. I pulled this quote out of the James Allen article on the livery:

      “Speaking at the livery launch, Renault’s managing director Cyril Abiteboul explained that the new colour scheme was selected to help the team stand out on the F1 grid as well as recognising the brand’s history.

      He said: “Today is about what’s in the season to come, and the important thing is the colour, that it says a lot about your identity and who you stand for. Tonight is about our identity and what Renault stands for.

      “I look around and it looks like people are trying to disappear from the Tarmac, so we’ve gone for something different. I think it works well. We’ve gone for yellow, which has been the colour of Renault since 1946, so we’ve been true to our history.””

      How true does it get when he says people are trying to disappear from the Tarmac! Instant respect for the team for that. Maybe that’s why nobody wants to sponsor the teams? They won’t be seen

      1. Equally, how true does it get when he points out that the important thing in a modern F1 team is the color — because everything else has been over-regulated down to the fractions, and there’s no actual racing any more…

  6. Excellent. Massive improvement! Am I also seeing a matte-finish a-la Red Bull??

    1. Yes, I’ve read somewhere that it is much lighter than regular paint, and also has increased aerodynamic benefits. It wouldn’t surprise me if more teams go matte next year.

  7. Amazing! Best looking car in years!

    Trés bien Renault. Trés bien.

  8. Can we say the looked at Red Bull and removed the gloss? I like this. We need color on the grid. Now if only Mclaren could go orange.

  9. beautiful…. a team sticking to its corporate colours.. Ron please take note !

    1. What are McLarens corporate colours as others on here have in the past given a detailed explanation that it is not orange?

      1. Black with white font and red foreground. So actually people criticizing McLaren for doing exactly what they hoping for.

  10. Christopher Aoun
    16th March 2016, 9:04

    Never been much of a Renault fan, but the way they have made a return is inspiring. And they look great. Modern. Tough. Eager……. with some colour!

    Good luck to them, and to K-Mag!!!

  11. Some colour in the field at last. Proper Renault, too.

  12. That is brilliant.

  13. Simple and good looking, nothing fancy, just paint job.

  14. Looks great. Can appreciate the car’s contours more in this livery, and great variety of colour for the grid. No nonsense, just team colour

  15. Jordans back !

    1. +1 :))

    2. Exactly what I was thinking :D

  16. Beautiful, beautiful livery. Proper colour scheme. Stunned!

  17. Gimi Raibbonen
    16th March 2016, 9:17

    It’s good. I mean, I don’t really like this shade of yellow, to be honest, but I’m just glad it actually has a vibrant main colour. Looks fresh on the eyes, for once.

  18. I really like that. Now we have two really good liveries (Williams and Renault).

    1. + Ferrari; Ferrari Red always looks good and they manage to renovate it from time to time (I like this year’s white touch).

      1. Agreed but people get bored if a team has the same colour for nearly 70 years, Renault in F1 in yellow will bring criticism of the yellow if they keep it for over 70 years but then they only stay in F1 for a few years at a time as a full team.

      2. ColdFly F1 (@)
        16th March 2016, 10:09

        + Sauber
        + Manor
        + is it Mercedes fault that everybody is using shades of grey, making their silver stand out less?

      3. If Ferrari got rid of the white and darkened the red to the early 1990s shade, it would be perfect.

        1. 2007 from Monaco onwards was a very nice red, it was one of the triple layer reds they offer on their road cars now but cost more to spec than a Ford Focus is to buy new.

    1. Nice spot :)

    2. @uneedafinn2win Just a typo – the image has been replaced.

  19. Looks fantastic. It’ll really stand out against the sea of grey and black that fills up the rest of the grid.

    Doesn’t hurt that the car is actually a nice looking car as well. Unlike some of Renault’s previous yellow and black efforts..

    1. 11 teams only one is black, 2 are grey/silver as a main colour so the sea of black and grey is actually a minority of 27.27% of the teams.

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        16th March 2016, 12:06

        Which of McLaren, Force India, Mercedes or Haas are you missing out there? Even ignoring that, whilst 27% may be a minority, it’s still over a quarter of all of them!

        I think people are missing the point though – colour isn’t the issue. Variety is. People are loving the Renault even though as a livery, it’s not that exciting – it’s just different to the rest.

        Mercedes are always going to be silver because it’s part of their branding. Ferrari will always be red. How would everyone react if McLaren, Force India and Haas decided to paint their cars red next year? There would be more colour but we’d still have the same issue.

        1. I view Force India’s livery evolution since 2014 as an attempt to slowly distance themselves from Vijay & the FI brand, ready for Aston or someone else to just take over the team/title sponsorship.

        2. I missed Haas when I was totting up but there is only 1 black car on the grid, there are 3 grey/silvers (there are 50 shades of grey remember), 1 red, 3 blues, 1 yellow, 1 white, 1 red/blue. That is quite a lot of variety for me as there are other flashes of colours within these base colours. There is no sea of grey, blue is as popular, there are 7 different base colour schemes in 11 teams I think it is being pedantic to question the colour variety as we do not have enough cars for every colour of the rainbow.

  20. RaceProUK (@)
    16th March 2016, 9:42

    One thing’s for sure: you won’t mistake this for another car when it’s a distance away :)

  21. There is a slight error in the article.
    Boullier added. “We have used metallic colours….”
    Boullier is the team chief at McLaren-Honda not Renault.

  22. WheeledWarrior
    16th March 2016, 9:47

    Sauber last year and now Renault are finally bringing back some color to the grid. This had been seriously lacking in many years since 2005.

  23. That nose though looks like the one they tested 2 years back at COTA when Lotus were running the tusk nose.

  24. The nose is different from the launch at the photo shoot. Looks like they’ve given more support to the front wing than other teams.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      16th March 2016, 11:56

      @srikanth – I assume it’s a legacy idea they were developing for Maldonado which is no longer required. They rarely show parts they are going to use in races on the launch cars…

    2. The livery is on a range of different cars from the past as far as I can see @srikanth, none of them resembling the current car

    3. @petebaldwin @bascb was a bit surprised to see developments early but guess I got into the technicals a bit too early.

  25. When you look at the Picture from the behind the car the engine covers on either sides are at different levels. Is that just specific to this car?

  26. Ummm, I don’t know if it is just me or the picture, but the end on rear shot of the car shows some symmetry differences between sides at the back, is this correct of just a trick of the eye?

    This one: https://www.racefans.net/2016/03/16/renault-reveals-yellow-race-livery-rs16/hyperfocal-0/

    Other than that, I like it, more on stage than in the ‘proper’ pics, will be good to see how it looks in real daylight. The Redbull is much more striking in daylight rather than the launch pics we got. not long now at least!

    1. From the huge opening for the suspension on the left side I would say they did not install that side of the cover properly!!

    2. It is asymetrical. They are using the 2014 Lotus car with the experimental 2015-style nose they ran in practise in the US GP

  27. Really like the livery but why have they chosen to use a Renault show car from 2005/6 to display it? And why have they used the hideous 2014 lotus with its make shift merc nose to display it in the drawings… They should have displayed it on the actual rs16… then it would have looked awesome!

  28. Which is the newest nose of the car? the one on the stage pics or the wide one on the other pics

  29. Different front noses?

    1. Entirely different cars…

    2. @praxis
      I’ve noticed that too. I wanted to say that I’m also pleased with the fact that Renault has a different nose from the rest of the grid, but then I saw those studio renders, and the nose looks different. Then I’ve noticed the difference between the left and the right side of the rear bodywork. Must be some mistakes on those renders if they were complied at the last minute.

  30. Aren’t these 2 completely different cars?

  31. One of best looking livery in recent years.hope that it perform well in track as well.
    Nice to see one of common dark livery of F1 grid gone.

  32. Really nice and decent paint job!

  33. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
    16th March 2016, 11:03

    At least let me pretend that Jordan Grand Prix are back…

    …anyways, matte yellow: I’m sold.

  34. Looks great, I like it.

  35. I like it – distinctive and true Renault.

  36. Funny how all you have to do is give your car a color and everyone fawns over how “great” a livery it is. While I agree that the color is nice (and a welcome change), the actual livery itself is pretty boring.

  37. I think that’s the 2014 Lotus, the back end gives it away. Great livery though!

  38. That’ll look great under lights – the side shot with the reflected spotlights gives a hint of that.

  39. Instead of palette swap from testing liveries (switch background from black to yellow and font color from white to black), I’m more amused we actually had proper car launch.

  40. Fudge Ahmed (@)
    16th March 2016, 13:11

    Car in the render’s looks like the 2014 Lotus with the flat nose tested at the end of the season, what the hell?

    Actual car looks lovely.

  41. Uh huh, you know what it is
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow
    Yeah uh huh, you know what it is
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow
    Black and yellow

  42. OK Cyril, I give up, what does Renault “stand for”?

    1. Racing
      Engine
      Not
      Always
      Updated
      Like
      The best

      1. Racing
        Engine
        Never
        Achieves
        Using
        Limited
        Tokens

        1. I think Renault stands for

          Rinky Econoboxes Normaly Acquired Under Long Term lease

          in other words, the brand fit with formula one is a figment of Carlos Ghosn’s imagination.
          His board members are clearly lackeys.

  43. Very nice! I looks great in the pictures but I bet it looks amazing in person!The honeycomb graphic is a nice subtle look.

  44. Saurabh (@sksahukanker62)
    16th March 2016, 15:04

    thats more like it… 👍👍

  45. Image #18 – what’s going on there? The bodywork covering the engine and exhaust is very asymmetric. Why is it so high on the left side, and low on the right side?

  46. What I like the most is the small details like the matte paint and the gold touches at the back. This car will look fantastic in person and in close up pictures, but on TV it will probably be well… just yellow. Much better than black though.

  47. Resembles the good old 1998 Jordan.

    1. Or rather more like the bad old, Midland owned, final Jordan EJ15 in it’s 2005 Moscow launch livery.

  48. Who didn’t see that coming! looks great, wish it was fast though

  49. Scott Campbell
    17th March 2016, 1:28

    Car looks fantastic!!! Finally a bit of colour.

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