Race teams have a variety of approaches to decorate their vehicles. Paint was the traditional approach, but recent years have seen car owners select digitally printed vehicle wraps for the race teams.

There are plenty of advantages to vehicle wraps. It takes a lot less time to produce a wrap and allows for greater creativity. There are also performance advantages.

The Andretti name is a fixture in the Indy Car circuit, and Andretti INDYCAR is a leading team, with Calton Herta fourth in the standings, followed by Kyle Kirkwood (eighth), Marcus Ericsson (16th) and Marco Andretti (31st). The team uses HP’s Latex 800W printer to wrap its 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES entries. To date, more than 100 race cars have been prepped and wrapped over the last decade.

Jeff Childers, creative director at Andretti Global, noted that the team has more teams, cars, and volume than ever before.

“Working with HP has enabled us to meet the demanding output required in the racing industry at speeds that would otherwise be unachievable,” Childers added. The HP Latex printers ensure every wrap we produce is as environmentally friendly as possible, while still displaying a full color gamut.

“One of the main benefits of the HP Latex 800 W printer is its color consistency, which allows the team to ensure brand accuracy and color consistency across multiple touchpoints,” Childers noted. “Andretti leverages HP Latex inks which have several advantages, including producing zero hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), non-flammability, non-combustibility, and it’s odorless.”

Prior to using digitally printed wraps, Andretti create the graphics on its cars using a hybrid approach.

“We painted the cars and did a mix of paint, wrap, and spot decals for logos,” said Childers. “We’ve moved to a complete wrap approach for both commercial flexibility and competition consistency.”

One of the key advantages to digitally printed wraps is the time savings. Childers pointed out that it is faster as it has less steps.

“With the newer printers, the car does not have to go to paint first,” he said. “You can just prep the carbon body and send to wrap. The wrap provides flexibility to make changes and is faster, lighter, and if something gets messed up you can reprint. The shift to 100% wrapping cars also helps the aerodynamics of the car.”

There are also more elements you can put into a wrap as compared to paint. “You are limited by time when it comes to custom paint jobs, so this frees up our time,” Childers said.

The business of motorsports has shifted with the embrace of vinyl wraps providing the flexibility to partners.

“It allows us to run multiple primary liveries throughout the season,” said Childers. “In past years, we may have had anywhere from eight to12 different primary wraps throughout the season. This year, we have had three consistent liveries for our three entries through the first few races.

“Everything has become more efficient, and HP allows us to have a competitive edge in wrapping our cars,” he added. “We can be flexible for our partners and easily apply different logos/brands to the car from one race to the next. We’re able to consistently improve and become more efficient the longer the partnership continues.”