The Renault Formula One Team has chosen Roland DG’s new TrueVIS VG2, the second-generation eco-solvent print-and-cut device, to produce prints for its Grand Prix cars.
The Renault F1 Team, which includes Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo [currently 12th in the F1 drivers' championship], has relied on Roland TrueVIS systems for many years at its Oxfordshire Technical Centre to produce stickers for its racing cars, livery for its support vehicles, displays for its hospitality areas and more.
Roland has now upgraded the award-winning TrueVIS VG Series with over 40 enhancements, allowing Renault F1 Team to push its boundaries for accuracy, reliability and turnaround speeds.
"One of the first things we noticed was the improvement in the colour matching, because a lot of what we do covers an entire season," said Joe McNamara, Head of Paint and Graphics at Renault F1 Team.
"It also comes with the new orange swatch which has about a hundred colours in there – yellows and oranges. It really makes our life easy when it comes to matching colours exactly for our corporate sponsors, and also for our own branding on cars, on garages, and on everything we take to races with us."
McNamara said new TR2 inks deliver bonding and stretching abilities for vehicle wrapping applications, and their fast-drying time allows his team to print, laminate and ship graphics to Renault F1 Team colleagues across the world on the same day.
The VG2's perf-cut feature is making work “much easier” when producing multiples of the same sticker, he said, while the new media clamp system is “a really clever piece of engineering.”
"What's really impressive about this machine is what it can do for the price it's pitched at. To have that colour gamut for that price point is really amazing. I just don't know how Roland does it."
Grand Prix events can attract worldwide audiences of more than 400 million viewers, and high-end sponsors demand the highest precision in their brand colours and immediate replacement of any damaged advertising graphics. Renault F1 Team travels with 30 identical versions of every sticker, totalling around 1,400 stickers for every race.
