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Culture

National racing colors

British racing green began as a courtesy to Ireland. Germany's silver may come from scraped paint, or not.

Origin
Gordon Bennett Cup, 1900
British green
1903 race, held in Ireland
Scraped-paint story
Unverified (first told in 1958)

Early motor races were contests between nations, so the cars wore national colors. In the Gordon Bennett Cup of 1900, the United States took red, Germany white and France blue. When Britain joined in 1902 its flag colors were gone, and Selwyn Edge raced a green Napier. He won, so the 1903 race went to Ireland, since racing on public roads was illegal in Great Britain. As a courtesy to the hosts, the British cars were painted shamrock green.

That's the root of British racing green, which never had one exact shade: early cars ran lighter olive and moss greens, later ones the deep hunter-like green the name means today. Italy came to race in red, the rosso corsa Ferrari still wears; France stayed blue; Germany raced in white.

Then Germany turned silver. The legend says that in 1934 the new Mercedes W25 weighed 751 kg against a 750 kg limit, so the team scraped off its white paint overnight and raced in bare aluminum. The story first appeared in 1958, in team manager Alfred Neubauer's memoirs; nothing from 1934 backs it, and silver Mercedes cars had raced before. A good tale, not history.

National colors faded once sponsors' liveries took over in the late 1960s, but they never vanished: Ferrari red, Mercedes silver and British green still echo them. Like heraldry, racing colors were a way to tell sides apart at a glance, at speed.

Swatches

Colors

Sources

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