McLaren's executive director Zak Brown says his team's new livery was partly a response to pressure from fans to go back to orange.
McLaren's association with the colour goes back to the late 1960s when the orange livery of a rival Can-Am car caught the eye of co-director Teddy Mayer. In 1968 McLaren's Can-Am and Formula One cars were decked out in a distinctive papaya orange livery that made the team stand out from the rest of the pack. The livery remained on the cars until 1971, after which the cars became predominantly white as part of a new sponsorship deal with Yardley Tobacco.
Orange returned to the cars for a number of one-off testing liveries, but will now feature prominently on this year's MCL32 race car.
"We went through a variety of designs and ultimately it was in response to fans," Brown said. "We've had so much outreach from the fans saying: 'We want to have some orange, we want to have some orange'.
"It's hard on livery, it was ultimately a dozen people involved in the whole process. If you show them through tonnes and tonnes of liveries, you've got lots of different opinion. For the diehard McLaren fans they'll notice the arc at the back is the McLaren speed mark. Picking up on that we think the orange stands out -- it's quite a bright orange, and when you walk up on the car you see the black is a different type of finish."
The new orange colour is not exactly the same as the old cars from the 1960s and 70s but instead Tarocco Orange -- a custom colour available as one of three tones of orange on McLaren road cars. Brown said the new livery had been designed to offer different looks from different angles.
"We wanted something that was elegant, impactful, also a lot of TV work done... when you look at it from the front it's going to look like an orange car. Not until you turn it to the side will you pick up its not fully orange. I think it's one of those that's pretty subjective as to what is a great paint scheme and what isn't a great paint scheme. Personally we love it and if you asked 100 people, hopefully the majority will love it,but you'll get some different views."