It’s still too early to get excited about Formula 1 as the circus’s craze will pick up as the sport gears up for the new season. However, McLaren decided to jump-start the hype with an event usually reserved for February. The Papaya team took a different approach and launched their livery way ahead of time but only digitally. This surprise McLaren livery launch has caught everyone off guard and left the fans baffled.

The digital livery launch was a two-parter. First, McLaren’s official Instagram page was wiped clean with all the previous posts archived, or deleted. The page then featured two posts in the space of one hour with the latter inducing goosebumps in the 11.7 million fans. This social media antic from McLaren, as it turns out, was a marketing gimmick to grab attention and create a buzz before they launched their livery.

It worked as well with many news outlets eating it up. For example, The Race tweeted, “SURPRISE! McLaren is the first F1 team to reveal their livery for the 2024 season with an unexpected January launch. Yes, just the livery for now… with the actual car still under wraps . What do you think?”

What do you think?: The question posed in the post is a good one as the fans did not shy away from expressing their opinion about the Papaya team’s new challenger on the Race’s tweet. The fans were quick to question many things about the livery but mainly the difference or the lack of it.

The fans asked this question over and over and different iterations of it in the reactions to the tweet. Let us highlight some of them.

Fans were left confused after the McLaren livery launch on Instagram

The new McLaren challenger will reveal itself to the world in real life later in the month or in February with the actual car still under wraps. However, going by the reactions to the digital launch, we have a feeling there won’t be a lot of excitement for the live livery launch or if many will turn up to look at the car up close.

At least that’s what the reaction to the tweet suggests with the majority of the fans asking, what’s the difference compared with the livery from last year?

The fans are not impressed with the design. However, if the car is rapid, the design, the color scheme, everything else won’t matter. It’s performance over everything else so let’s wait for the pre-season testing.