Beyond the Flag
Fansided

Indy 500’s most striking livery has been revealed

By Asher Fair

Felix Rosenqvist, Arrow McLaren SP, Indy 500, IndyCar
Felix Rosenqvist, Arrow McLaren SP, Indy 500, IndyCar /
facebooktwitterreddit

For this year’s Indy 500, the Arrow McLaren SP IndyCar team revealed a striking new livery design for the #7 Vuse Chevrolet driven by Felix Rosenqvist.

In his third career Indy 500 attempt and first with the Arrow McLaren SP IndyCar team, you won’t be able to miss Felix Rosenqvist on the track.

Not after he and the team unveiled a striking new livery design for his #7 Vuse-sponsored Chevrolet for this 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana.

In a first of its kind collaboration with the founders of streetwear brand Undefeated (UNDFTD), Rosenqvist’s #7 Chevrolet incorporates the brand’s iconic tiger print with McLaren’s iconic papaya paint color.

Take a look at the new design below.

More from IndyCar

This livery design was done in support of the Vuse Design Challenge, where designers are asked to do what UNDFTD did here.

One winner will be chosen by a panel comprised of Arrow McLaren SP designers and have his or her design featured on Rosenqvist’s car for the Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee in August, marking a first of its kind opportunity.

“This is the first time anyone has done anything like this, this kind of collaboration we have with UNDFTD,” Rosenqvist told Beyond the Flag. “It’s definitely something I think is super cool, to give someone the chance to design a racing car for a race like the Indy 500. I think the Indy 500 has always been a race where people show up with different liveries. But this one is very unique because it doesn’t really have any connection to any specific brand color like that.

“We’re still orange obviously, which is our colors that we use — sorry, papaya orange! — but the livery is not related to anything; it’s just a cool piece of art. And I think that’s super cool.”

He didn’t have a say in the design, but he is happy with how it turned out.

“No I didn’t, but I’m super happy with how it showed up,” he admitted. “I just had a look right now at the real car at the shop. I think it looks so fast; that’s the main thing for me. If it looks fast and if you have a good feeling about the car, it normally gives everyone a good little boost in the team. I think it looks awesome.”

Rosenqvist also spoke about the Vuse Design Challenge.

“We already have 600 people signed up to basically get their livery on my car for that race, like a competition to see who can come up with the coolest design, and we will pick one to race on the car in Nashville,” he said.

“Very cool that we can do stuff like this, and I don’t really remember seeing it anywhere else before. … I think there’s probably going to be around 1,000 applications to join that challenge. So it’s going to be a very good competition, and I’m sure whatever comes on the car is going to be looking really cool.”

Official rules for the challenge can be found here.

We also spoke with James Bond, one of the co-founders of UNDFTD, and Simon Dibley, Specialist, Design, McLaren Racing.

“UNDFTD we started in 2002, primarily a sneaker store, but over the course of the past 20 years, we’ve turned into an apparel brand, kind of a beacon of the culture from sneaker collectors into fitness, since we opened our first gym a few years ago,” Bond told Beyond the Flag. “We’ve been encompassing kind of a casual lifestyle based in Los Angeles, but as we’re kind of percolating across the country and also into the Far East; we’re in Japan and China as well at the moment.”

This is the brand’s first venture into IndyCar, and Bond couldn’t be more excited.

“This is definitely our first venture into something this monumental”, he said. “This is a real opportunity to look at this as a business, where we can be a part of something that’s like being a part of the Super Bowl; it’s a great opportunity to show UNDFTD in a new light to new consumers and also show that the culture that we come from isn’t really what is deemed to be too much of a threat. It’s fun, it’s fashion, it’s culture, it’s music, it’s art — we tie all that into the design of the car.”

He also spoke about the Vuse Design Challenge.

“We did a collaboration with AMSP as an early kind of beacon for the Vuse Design Challenge,” he stated. “They were looking at different partners and collaborators, so we were kind of the kickoff for the first part of that project. … I think it will be very fun; it’s interesting to see what peoples’ thought processes are on something like this.”

The brand hadn’t previously worked with Dibley, but the relationship has been phenomenal.

“We hadn’t met him previously, so it was more of kind of like a shot in the dark,” admitted Bond. “We wanted the cars to look fast even when sitting neutral. So we wanted to give him opportunities creatively when he looked at the graphics or the livery that we proposed, to look at the car and go, ‘Oh man, that’s disruptive, it looks great, it looks strong’, all those kind of beacons of that strength and speed that we’re thinking, in our minds, that he would want to see for his car.”

Dibley shares that excitement.

“It’s been pretty awesome to see it unfold,” he told Beyond the Flag. “I haven’t actually seen it on the car yet, so I’ll be excited to see that all come together.”

But he admitted that it was somewhat of a challenge, compared to a regular livery.

“We definitely needed to think about the partner logos on that, because we’re going across multiple different colors,” he explained. “We had to make sure that they pop while we’ve still got the awesome, intricate sort of livery underneath it.”

He is looking forward to the Vuse Design Challenge as well.

“It’ll be a completely different challenge,” he admitted. “I’ll be a judge on the panel, and I’m not sure what to expect or what I personally would be looking for because I think it’ll just be awesome to see what people come up with and then choose from there. … Just generally excited to see what they come up with.

Next. Top 25 IndyCar drivers of all-time. dark

Practice for this year’s Indy 500 is scheduled to begin tomorrow, with qualifying scheduled for Saturday, May 22 and Sunday, May 23 before the race itself on Sunday, May 30. Through five races this season, Rosenqvist sits in 18th place in the championship standings after being bitten by misfortune in several events, most notably the two races at Texas Motor Speedway where he had a car to finish on the podium both times.