Williams FW31 livery – official pictures

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The 2009 colour scheme for the Williams FW31 has been revealed by the team

We’ve had sneak peeks of the Williams FW31’s final livery twice already but now the team have published official photographs of the final design. See below for more pictures.

More pictures of the Williams FW31

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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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33 comments on “Williams FW31 livery – official pictures”

  1. That really is a bare looking car isn’t it.

    I don’t mind it, I think there’s either too much white on the top of the sidepods or too little (they needed to go one way or another, at the moment its kind of in between and it just makes it look a little clunky), but other than that I like it.

  2. Wow, that’s a bright blue, wasn’t expecting that. It’s almost circa ’94-’98 livery, without the gold and red stripes.

    1. exactly my thoughts..

      A very retro look to the car

  3. woah. not seen those flow regulator ‘fins’ either side of the cockpit before. interesting take. i assume they are set just inside of the inner limit of non-aero device zone. interesting take.

    livery is…. particularly uninspiring, yet clean and simple. quite like it actually.

  4. Having looked closer and seen those shark fin things on the sides of the cockpit, I’ve decided I hate it.

    Seriously… re-write the rulebook again and this time do it properly, no sticky-out bits ANYWHERE between the front and rear wings.

  5. Has any other team tried out those skate fins (as the team calls them according to Autosport), next to the cockpit, I thought those would have been banned this year, but then I thought the fins Ferrari are mounting their mirrors on would also have been banned this year. They defiantly don’t add to the cars looks.

    I would have liked them to stick with the low and wide nose seen in some testing pictures as that was the best 2009 nose in my opinion, hopefully they will switch back to it later on.

    I agree with the previous comments, the car does look a bit bare and in these pictures the shade of blue is brighter than I would have expected.

  6. Could be the lighting making the blue look lighter…

    Don’t like the ear things behind the cockpit…got I hope they don’t catch on…

    Didn’t like the preview pics we saw with the older nose in this livery, but this revised nose does look a lot better with it…

  7. Quite good looking, although I would have preferred a darker blue. The front wheel covers are very elegant.
    It has turned out to be just about exactly what the national U.S. racing colours are : blue with 2 white stripes !
    Cheers to Williams and god luck !

    1. The more I look at it, the more I like it … there is a strong geometric theme in dark and light colours – this is what you see from a distance and it looks very good.
      I hope the blues and whites are metallics. I would have perhaps exagerated the differences in colurs, making the blue darker and the wheels chromed.
      I would love to see a new logo soon like Virgin or some other big one. Any brand will enhance its status by being shown on this elegant car.

  8. surely the best looking car we’ll see this year :)

    1. doesn’t it look like the 97 Arrows?… or some old school car?

    2. The ’97 Arrows had a lot more white on it, with silver flashes. But it’s in a mildly similar vein.

  9. I like it a lot. The bright blue is something different. Good!

  10. Not a McLaren, but a beautiful car.

  11. 1. Livery = decent, there should’ve been more thought put into where the white stripes go
    2. Bright blue = nice, reminds me of 1994-1997
    3. High(er) nose = bad
    4. pinguin fins = BAN THEM ALL ALREADY!!

  12. ChickenMcNuggets
    27th February 2009, 16:26

    Personally I love it. You know what they mean when they say, “if it’s as fast as it looks…”

    I think the high nose suits it a lot, and it looks very cleanly styled and liveried. I agree, it did put me in mind as well of an FW19 or something…

  13. The front wing doesn’t do too much to draw attention to itself, therefore making it appear smaller.

  14. Fantastic. Finally looking like they are getting away from the similarities to BMW’s livery.

  15. Not a fan of the lighter blue. The deep navy that was on the interim car hid some of the ugliness of the 2009 regs. Now I am waffling between this and the Macca car for beauty of this season.

  16. Not bad but somehow it looked darker and meaner in the other pictures…

  17. Won’t look half as good with those dreadful green-striped tyres..

  18. The black on the front wings helps a great deal in making it look smaller than it really is.

    The shape of the rear wing end plates makes the best of a very inelegant solution. A very nice looking car if you ask me.

  19. Am I the only one who doesn’t like the livery? It basically looks like RBS stationary – very bland and corporately boring.

    However, the car itself looks better than most of its counterparts, the rear wing doesn’t look as retarded (although there’s no front elevation to see, the use of wide angle shots help make it look smaller, and it could be in low drag config).

  20. I must admit I prefer the testing livery but this one is fine too – not sure is the blue lighter or is it just due to lighting. And on a glance I didn’t even notice the skate fins, I’m not too fond of them – they look like something BMW tried a few years ago untill they banned them.

    Could it be a ”red herring” so other teams would waste resources trying to find does it really add advantage…

  21. not only does the car look great, but i like the way they debuted the car (pushing it out the garage door and running away – effective and free!)

    i wish more teams would adopt more conservative liveries. is there a british company that could sponsor a nice green and silver mclaren?

  22. Something about this car harks back to Williams’ more succesful era…hopefully a sign of things to come..!!

    Interesting how the teams are discovering which angles suit the new cars to disguise some of the inherant ugliness of the new wing dimensions…I feel a blog coming on on the subject..!!

    1. It’s true. The darker the blue for Willams lately, the slower the car. Let’s hope it IS this bright!

      It doesn’t look like the same nose as the launch car. I wonder….

      Also, there is some blue contact covering where a major sponsor might appear on the side of the monocoque. They’ve obviously got someone ready to go, but keeping it covered for now. Check out (clickable) pic no.3.

  23. Looks absolutely gorgeous, but quite bare.

    Dunno why, but it makes me think it looks like the best Superleague Formula car never raced.

  24. Al H.: “Won’t look half as good with those dreadful green-striped tyres..”

    Very true, would have looked great on Honda

  25. You won’t probably know what I mean but the livery reminds me of an old militia cars in pre-democratic Poland. Having that in mind I hate it.

  26. Looks good, but I still would prefer that all-dark blue scheme they ran in testing the last few years.

  27. Fantastic car.Nose simillar to Ferrari.

  28. Now that is a good looking car

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