5 Retro Liveries We Want to See at the MotoGP British GP

MotoGP has announced that the 2024 British Grand Prix will be used to celebrate the championship’s 75th birthday by dressing all the teams and riders up in classic liveries.

There have been some absolutely stunning liveries used in MotoGP over the years, and we’ve picked out five - one for each manufacturer - that we’d love to see make a comeback for this one-off heritage spectacle.

Ducati 750 Imola Desmo

We aren’t starting with a classic Grand Prix livery but we are starting with an affirmatively iconic classic livery. The Ducati 750 Imola Desmo is one of the most important bikes in Ducati’s racing history, winning the 1972 Imola 200 with Paul Smart.

It’s also an absolutely stunning bike with a gorgeous all-silver livery, the most beautiful in Ducati’s history in our opinion. As is the case with all the liveries used at Silverstone in August, alterations will have to be made to accommodate sponsors, but an all-silver scheme is a rare one that will look great in both overcast and sunny conditions (it is the British Grand Prix, after all).

Repsol Honda

Reports in the media suggest that the Repsol-Honda partnership will be done at the end of this year after 30 seasons. The last time the factory Honda MotoGP team ran without Repsol sponsorship was when Mick Doohan won his first 500cc world title in 1994.

Silverstone, then, could be the last opportunity for Honda to go back to the peak of its Repsol look, with the navy background returning. Keep the black wheels, though, we’re after 2002 here.

The KTM Conundrum

KTM’s history is pretty weird, especially when thinking about asphalt where it has only really been present since the turn of the century. 

If you want a proper historic KTM livery, get the red and silver used by Gennady Moiseev to secure KTM’s first Motocross World Championship in the 1974 250cc class.

If you specifically want something from the Motorcycle World Championship, you’ll need to look at the 125cc and 250cc World Championships in the 2000s. 

Surely, in that case, the answer is simple: 2004. That year, Casey Stoner joined the Red Bull KTM 125cc team and won the Mattighofen marque’s first Grand Prix, at Malaysia.

Aprilia

The standout Aprilia livery from its Grand Prix history is absolutely Max Biaggi’s Chesterfield paint from the mid-1990s, but we don’t think Dorna is wanting cig’ sponsors to return at Silverstone.

In that case, and assuming Aprilia doesn’t want to revisit the troublesome RS Cube, we reckon they should pull out a McWilliams-era RSW-2 paint job. It looked as good as the Cube, but it handled more like an RS-GP.

Oh, Yamaha

We’ve saved the hardest choice for last here, because Yamaha’s catalogue of absolute stunners is about as long as the list of injuries caused by the RS Cube.

Do they go classic blue? White and red speed blocks? Yamaha America yellow? Even flash back to Gauloise? It’s a tough call, especially as the regular Monster livery is both tired and boring, and so it is vital that Yamaha gets this right. 

We reckon a Marlboro scheme would work best, and not only because it was and always will be an all-time icon. It’s also the livery that the paint scheme (at least, the one you want) for the Yamaha XSR900 GP is based on, and so it has obvious marketability, too.

It’s an obvious call, but if we’re honest we won’t be mad if they come over all Laguna 2005 on us, either.