JANUARY 28, 2015

McLaren to test 2015 car with black livery?

McLaren looks set to debut its Honda-powered 2015 car on Sunday with an all-black livery, according to the Spanish sports daily Marca.

Late on Tuesday, photographs started doing the rounds on Twitter depicting team returnee Fernando Alonso equipped with his new Honda-branded white overalls.

McLaren's 2015 driver uniform, also sported by Jenson Button on Tuesday for pre-season multimedia activities, is nearly identical to the ones raced last year by Button and Kevin Magnussen -- with a couple of differences.

Notably, the sponsor logos of Hugo Boss and even Santander are now gone.

Autosprint, the respected Italian publication, predicted that McLaren is keeping something up its sleeve.

The report said McLaren is likely to do a "double media launch", starting with the public reveal of the MP4-30 on Thursday "with an anonymous livery".

The second launch, Autosprint speculated, could be to unveil the actual race livery of the 2015 car, following reports McLaren is dropping its familiar silver look at Honda's behest.

Spain's Marca said it has learned that the Jerez test livery will be all black, although Alonso himself 'tweeted' a photo on Monday of two historical McLarens in the British team's iconic orange.

(GMM)