McLaren Will Run This Awesome Ayrton Senna Tribute Livery In Monaco

The Monaco Grand Prix is almost upon us, and that means a few things: not a whole lot of overtaking, the overuse of the words ‘glamorous’ and ‘historic’ to the point where they lose all meaning, and plenty of references to that 1988 Ayrton Senna pole lap, when the Brazilian driver somehow eked out nearly a second-and-a-half advantage over his McLaren teammate and rival Alain Prost.

In fact, the combination of Senna, McLaren and Monaco is a special one. Senna, who won his three world championships with the Woking team, claimed victory at Monaco six times – five of them with McLaren (ironically, that transcendent 1988 pole lap didn’t lead to one of them – a rare mistake 67 laps into that year’s race saw put him it in the barrier at Portier).

To commemorate this remarkable level of success, just over 30 years after Senna’s untimely death at Imola, McLaren will run this year’s Monaco Grand Prix with a special ‘Senna Sempre’ (‘Senna Forever’) livery.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s MCL38s will wear the one-off livery that’s heavily inspired by the flag of Senna’s native Brazil, featuring a unique yellow, green and blue look – a far cry from the team’s usual papaya.

To further celebrate its most storied driver, McLaren has decked out a Senna road car in a version of the livery, too. On the road car, the colours blend together with a ‘wash’ technique that’s been specially developed by McLaren’s MSO personalisation division, allowing the paint to blend without a new colour being created. It also features intricate dot-matrix depictions of Senna himself that only become apparent when viewed from a distance.

The one-off Senna will be on display in Monaco during the Grand Prix weekend, while Norris and Piastri do their best to add to McLaren’s victory tally at the glamorous and historic race (damn). With Lando Norris managing to snatch victory from Max Verstappen in Miami, and very nearly doing it again last weekend at Imola, that, for once, is not out of the question. Wouldn’t it be extra special to see it happen with this livery?