Last week’s news that Rio Haryanto would become Indonesia’s very first Formula One racer filled many of our hearts with pride. But how much prouder will we feel when we see Rio hit the track sitting behind the wheel of his cutting-edge, precision engineered Formula One racecar…. that looks just like one of Jakarta’s infamous Metromini buses?
Rio got into F1 by winning a slot on the prestigious Manor Racing team. Yesterday on Twitter, the official Manor Racing account revealed their new MRT05 “Dream Racer”. For anybody who has spent any amount of time on Jakarta’s streets, the color scheme should look extremely familiar.
If the dream of this “Dream Racer” was to make it resemble one of Jakarta’s infamously dangerous and unpopular Metromini buses, then they have made those dreams a reality. Seriously, we know this is probably just a weird coincidence of design, but the fact they they choose the same orange top, white stripe, blue bottom color motif as the Metromini is uncanny.
Indonesian netizens were very quick to point out the similarities.
Rio probably had no input on the color scheme for the team’s cars, so we actually feel a little bad for him that he’s going to get teased by Indonesian fans all season because of this.
But Rio should not be embarrassed to be driving in the orange, white and blue. Instead, he should try to draw inspiration from the Metrominis his racecar resembles and drive with the same spirit of insane recklessness as their drivers do. It would certainly give him an edge on the competition (although it would probably get him killed too…).
