Wolff gives first clue about the livery of the Mercedes W16

Lewis Hamilton will no longer be a pilot Mercedes In 2025, the Briton will retain a certain influence on the German team. Indeed, for the livery that will dress the future W16 in 2025, the Silver Arrows will continue to wear a partly black dress. The black color had appeared on the Mercedes during the 2020 season, when the Stuttgart manufacturer had decided to do without its traditional silver livery to denounce all forms of discrimination and fight against racism. after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. A fight dear to Lewis Hamilton, involved in the “Black Lives Matter” movement for several years, and which Mercedes intends to continue despite the departure of the English driver to Ferrari.

“[Lewis Hamilton] is a global phenomenon and he has certainly played a role in positioning the Mercedes brand to become a little bit bolder, a little bit more contemporary and extravagant, had stated Toto wolff with Channel 4, after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. But he's had an impact on diversity issues; you know, a lot of our population today is from underrepresented groups and that's what's going to make us stronger, because it's different cultures, different perspectives. [Hamilton] made us kneel when we had to, and he supported us in making the car black and it's going to stay black. We're not going to back down."

Since 2020, the Silver Arrows have always used a predominantly black livery, with the exception of the 2022 season when Mercedes adopted an almost entirely silver livery. In 2024, the German team adopted a black and silver livery: in addition to the symbolism of the fight against racism, the black color – or rather the absence of paint on the single-seaters – saves weight by leaving the carbon fiber bare. This can also be seen as a nod to the history of Mercedes: in fact, the traditional silver color of the Stuttgart firm originated in 1934, when the manager Alfred Neubauer and his driver Manfred von Brauchitsch had the idea of… scraping the paint off their Mercedes-Benz W25 to get under the maximum authorized weight, thus leaving the aluminum to shine for all to see.

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