Williams F1 will have no Gulf livery! Here's why

When the Gulf partnership was rumoured to have become official Williams, there was expectation from fans that the Grove-based squad could have a traditional Gulf Livery.

Even in 2021, McLaren paid homage to the traditional Gulf livery by using throwback colours during the 2021 F1 Monaco GP. However, after the launch of Williams livery, some fans would be disappointed to see a livery that looks almost the same as last season.

That was certainly not what many fans had in mind when they became aware of a possible Williams-Gulf partnership.

The reasoning behind little change in the livery is the fact that Gulf will not be a major title sponsor for the team, so Gulf's presence on the car will be slightly muted. There is, however, a lack of clarity on whether we could see a one-off Gulf livery just like Alpine had with BWT last season.

As reported by The Race, Gulf boss Mike Jones said:

“Of course anything we do in the future’s got to be bigger and better than before. We have a lot of Gulf fans around the world, we have a lot of requests for our livery. We want our livery to be special. We’re launching a number of fan-centric activation plans.

We always feel that Gulf is a fans’ favourite and we really want our fans to be part of that. We’re really looking at different solutions for that across the Formula 1 spectrum and we’ll be launching our activation plans in the near future.”

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Williams is fifth-most popular Formula 1 team

There is another school of thought where the team is looking to establish its branding now since the Dorilton capital has taken over. With that in mind, the branding of the team too has become a focus.

Alluding to that, Williams commercial director James Bower talked about the team being the fifth-most popular in F1. So now it's all about demonstrating performance and attracting great partners like Gulf. He said:

“The key thing for me and the way I view the task is about demonstrating the performance of the brand. Williams today is currently the fifth-most popular team in Formula 1 by the metrics used by Formula 1 and a number of other teams.

We’re one of only three teams that have competed consistently, same brand, for over 40 years. A lot of the role is about framing that. And then securing partners like Gulf that are really best in class, that are sustainable over the long term."

He added:

“So it’s really part of a long-term plan and kind of short-term (thinking) is something we’re moving away from; we’re really looking further in terms of commercial partner portfolio over a longer horizon.”

With Nicholas Latifi gone, Williams will have a driver pairing of Logan Sargeant and Alex Albon this season.