On the broadcast for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono this week (the result of which was changed after two cars were deemed to be illegal), someone observed that all of the cars this year that have won race have been predominantly red, white and/or blue. Of itself this isn't a very good observation to make because colours of racecars from about the late 1960s onwards have been mostly determined by the corporate sponsorship of the teams involved. Basically ever since Colin Chapman in Formula One realised that he could make a bit of money by flogging off the colour scheme to corporate sponsorship, the floodgates were opened. His Lotus team changed from being green to red and gold to reflect the cigarette brand Gold Leaf; which says that whomever pays the piano player gets to sing their songs.
As someone who likes to view the world through the lens of sport, where too much is never enough, I think it interesting that of all of the corporate colours of the world, there are far more red and blue ones, with black, white and yellow next, with green, purple, brown and pink, trailing off into obscurity.
This also applies to national flags for the same reason. Most of the worlds flags contain, red, white, blue, yellow, green, and black. The Olympic Flag with its five coloured rings, deliberately chose those colours for this specific reason; you will be hard pressed to find any country in the world whose flag does not contain one of those six colours.
Having said all of that, there is still a tendency for corporate identities to favour either red or blue and once you realise that, the fact that all of the cars this year that have won have been predominantly red, white and/or blue seems less remarkable.
Though there's something else going on here. NASCAR which is arguably the most mercenary of all motor racing series when it comes to chasing the corporate dollarpound, also has the problem that because more of the corporate colours of the world are either red and blue, then this tends to make them less special on a racetrack of 40 odd cars at once. A yellow car in a pack of red and blue ones will stand out more because it is different.
Yet despite this, there is still a tendency for red cars in particular to win; this is not unique.
If you drill down into the data for the colour of the teams that have won in English Football going all the way back to 1861 (this was the biggest and most comprehensive database that I could find), not only is there a weak tendency that when red teams are playing anyone else they tend to win, when blue teams are playing anyone else they tend to win, and when red and blue teams are playing each other the red teams tend to win.
Now of course looking at the data doesn't explain why, and that data contains very obvious blips like Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal who play in red, and very obvious blips like Everton, Chelsea, and Manchester City who play in blue, but its curious that this extends all the way down through all four divisions of English Football. If say Rotherham (red) and Oxford Utd (yellow) were to play each other, then in general across 161 years, Rotherham is likely to win. If AFC Wimbledon (blue) and Plymouth Argyle (green) were to play each other, then we should expect AFC Wimbledon to win. All things being equal if Miscellaneous Utd (red) and Generic City FC (blue) were to play each other, then we should expect Miscellaneous Utd to win.
I should point out here that the tendency for red teams to win is so very very weak that it's far from guaranteed. The advantage conferred appears to be about 1/10th of a goal and worth 1.01 vs 1. Still, a 1% advantage if you are repeating an experiment literally thousands of times over more than a century and a half, is not mere coincidence.
If you apply this to Formula One, the advantage is hideously exaggerated. Granted that in the early days of the sport that teams flew their national motor racing colours but even so, the world superpowers of motor racing are Italy, Germany and Britain (red, silver, green). After the advent of corporate sponsorship of the teams, Mercedes-Benz was already long gone from the sport, and this leaves the Scarletti of Ferrari and the red and white of Marlboro cigarettes as the two most likely colour schemes to win. Again, Mercedes-Benz had a hand in altering the colours of McLaren when they finally came back in anger and fielded their own Silberferns and men in black of late, and Brabham, Williams, Benetton, Renault, and Red Bull have popped up from time to time for the blue and whites, but in general the tendency remains.
In Australia, Holden, Shell, Winfield, and Vodafone, have been hideously successful for red; while Ford's blue has lagged behind a lot of the time.
I could argue that humans as bioelectromechanical meatbags with optical systems which are designed to find red things which indicate food, fire, and danger, against the backdrop of green plants and blue skies, have been crafted specifically to respond better to red wavelengths of light and maybe there is a good scientific paper to back this up but that doesn't quite explain why across sporting events, which are made up and ultimately do not matter (which is why they matter so very very much) people and machines driven by people, playing in red, tend to do better.
What I want to know, is if playing in red makes the participants marginally better, or if facing a team in red makes the participants marginally worse. The big red machines of Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpoool, all chose their colours long before the corporate dollarpound ever showed up. Ferrari didn't even choose its colours but got its scarletti from and European Sporting Council which gave Italy red, as early as 1911.
If so, does this explain why the Romans like red standards, why England's three gold lions are set against red, why the English Army were the redcoats; why the communists and socialists raised the scarlet standard high? I have no idea.
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