Codemasters To Update Mercedes Trigger-Detection Livery For F1 2020

As announced in a tweet and news post on Monday the Mercedes F1 team have updated their 2020 livery in an effort to spread awareness of the injustices and issues surrounding race around the world. While most people didn’t bother to read their news post I feel it does make some really interesting points and certainly does highlight the main issues they as a brand feel they can improve upon. They will be actively trying to increase diversity in their workforce and their fanbase, and have changed their livery in the same way many people changed their profile pictures during social media ‘blackouts’ in the past month or so.

The livery itself is gorgeous, which is why it has been very interesting to see the varying reactions from within the racing and sim racing communities, especially those affected in no way by the livery change because they either should be a fan of the drivers, team, sport, or don’t actually work at or with Mercedes. I’ve even seen people saying that they love the livery, but don’t like the message… A message of equality, inclusivity and diversity.

You could perhaps say that the livery has acted as a sort of radar for those who seem abnormally triggered by others having the same opportunity they do, presumably because they don’t actually have any skills or ability to self determinate and instead have to blame these random worldwide events because it literally is impossible for them to blame their failures on themselves. Frankly any negative reaction to a message of equality doesn’t make them come across very well.

While the reactions in some places has been overwhelmingly positive, I am especially looking forward to the sim racers who can’t cope with this livery switch to quit sim racing entirely because they’ll obviously have taken note when in the past month both company and personal pages connected to every developer took part in social media ‘blackouts’, and will refuse to use software created by people who, like Mercedes, want to live on a nicer planet.

I’ve very recently come to the realization that the sim racing and racing communities are home to some racist assholes (well – let’s be honest – racists. I already knew about the assholes). This is made apparent by news like this and the reaction to it, also to seemingly innocent information like iRacing adding driver customization – it’s the same people saying the same shit. There are people seemingly so hurt by the fact that other people may feel represented visually in a video game that they take it upon themselves to parade their arrogance infront of others.

Let’s look at the timeline of events first of all:
– George Floyd is killed and we see protests and supportive acts from companies and private individuals – May 25 onwards.
– Greg West posts on the forums about it, including the build that is scheduled – Jun 3.
– iRacing announce driver customization officially – Jun 27.

Nothing at iRacing happens in a week – LOL. iRacing were working on this before the recent racial tensions (the forum post linked above says they started it last year). If you accuse them of virtue signalling after the death of George Floyd, as a way to “cash in” on events, you kind of just sound like an asshole.

A week. LOL