V8 Supercars is the premiere motorsport category in Australia. The biggest race of the V8 Supercars calendar is arriving soon, with the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 endurance race, around the world-famous Mount Panorama track scheduled for the 8-11th of October.
The Holden Racing Team has unveiled their special livery for the big event. In a cross promotion with the upcoming movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the team has a livery that will draw plenty of attention even outside the world of motorsport.
The #2 HRT VF Commodore race car Tander will share with co-driver Warren Luff will feature Kylo Ren and his lightsaber on one side of its striking black and red livery, and a First Order Stormtrooper on the other – Kylo Ren and the Stormtrooper replacing the iconic HRT driver and lion on the other.
Apparently driver Garth Tander is a big fan of the franchise, saying that “Star Wars is the greatest movie franchise in history”. It sounds like this is just a taste of what’s to come, with Holden’s Sponsorship and Motorsport Manager, Simon McNamara saying
“Today’s unveiling is just the first in a number of innovative activations we have planned in our recently announced association with The Walt Disney Company Australia and New Zealand to promote the Star Wars franchise,”
As the sport continues to push the technical development of the vehicles, to yield even more performance out of the cars, the sport is growing its international audience with another international round added to the calendar next year.
If teams need to partner with advertising partners, it’s a decent way to increase income to teams that have ever expanding costs in an amazingly competitive category. If the livery designers keep getting the mix right (like they have here) it’s likely the fans won’t mind, but the line is fine, misuse this branding and we could see the cars turn into a garbage bag of logos like NASCAR.
With liveries changing between races more than ever before, it’ll certainly keep the livery designers in games like Forza 6 busy as they try to keep up. It’d be great to see the partnership between V8 Supercars and Forza MotorSport continue with an official program to release new liveries as they arrive.
More information at V8 Supercars.