The new F1 rule that DEMANDS cars look better in 2026

F1 Explained

The new F1 rule that DEMANDS cars look better in 2026

Formula 1 cars look better for a reason this year

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Thursday 12 February 2026 12:55

You may have noticed over this season's livery launches that the Formula 1 cars for this year look, well, a little better than usual.

And I don't mean the finer details of the new rules and regulations that can change a car's shape. They have course come in for 2026 and threatened to tip the order upside down like a Monopoly board in your average family game.

No this is more in your face, and it's the return of bright glossy colours to F1 cars, and not before time.

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But why (Werner Herzog impression)? Sadly, it's not because teams have found a sense of fun again and started to make the sport just that little bit more enjoyable... it's because they have been forced too.

Before we start booing teams and throwing paper cups at them for abandoning this in the first place, they all had good reasons for ditching gloss and moving to matte paint or even just plain old carbon fibre.

Of course, that's performance. Gloss paint may look better than matte paint (and don't let any tacky millionaire with a matte paint Lamborghini tell you otherwise) but it is technically heavier.

You may laugh at this and think surely it can't be that much of a difference to matter but remember F1 teams run on fine margins so anything that has the slightest advantage gets the nod.

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When did F1 cars start using matte paint?

Red Bull started putting matte paint on their cars in 2016 with Ferrari next to fall in line in 2019.

Everyone else followed suit, but then the breaking point came. For 2024, Alpine promised two new liveries, with expectations of one being blue and one being pink, as had been seen in the past with their sponsor BWT. They even had a tweet hinting of a whole pink livery.

From 2016 up until the end of 2025, Red bull applied matte paint to their car

Instead they presented two black cars, one with blue trim, one with pink trim. It was a complete joke and something had to be done to end the dullness.

What paint do they use on F1 cars?

Following an F1 Commission meeting in 2025, it was decided that a new rule that mandated 'a minimum of 55 per cent of surface area (when viewed from the side and above) must be covered by painted or stickered liveries as opposed to bare carbon fibre surfaces.

'The objective of this measure is to increase visual differentiation between cars.'

And that is why the cars look a little better this year. Sure, the days of Honda unveiling a car with a livery of planet earth (no, really!) are probably long gone but this new rule gives us hope that we can have F1 cars that look as awesome as they ever did.

F1 2026 regulations