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Much of the unpainted black bodywork is carbon fiber with unpainted black plastic tail tanks.. The white body work is unpainted white gelcoat fiberglass with black plastic tail tanks (I don't think they make white plastic tail tanks.)
Paint weighs 8 to 10 lbs and cost a lot of money so unless you have a sponsor who pays for the paint and insists on a certain paint job, it probably won't get painted.
If you go to the pit, you will see many cars who don't even paint the frame, to save money and weight. They just spray the frames with WD40 to control rust.
Its good that cheap "stick on" decals are available or many of them would use "shoe polish" numbers.
Unfortunately, with most racing going to spec cars, they also seem to be going to spec black and white "colors"
Actually, Most of the top nascar, indyspeccar and sports cars use expensive decal wrap for all of their colors and graphics to save 15 to 20 lbs of weight.
When I use to get fiberglass parts in my shop for repair, I could read the entire history of the car by sanding down through all the layers of different paint colors, just like rings of a tree. Some of this stuff probably had 15 to 20 lbs of extra weight with 6 to 8 layers of extra paint.
It is quite sad what this has all turned into.....
mac miller in INDY
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