Nailed it: The story behind the development of the AMR25 Exact Match nail gel

From racetrack to fingertips. We explore the development of the AMR25 Exact Match nail gel: a world-first, created in collaboration with Glaize, that I / AM members can get their hands on in The FanMade DROP.

FanMade is for the fans, by the fans – just amplified by us. We're bringing fan culture from the comments to the real world and leaning into TikTok trends that are taking off, and that includes… nails.

With more than 30 billion views, #nailtok is huge and with the @astonmartinf1 admin often found scrolling through a kaleidoscope of Aston Martin-inspired nail-art on our 'For You' feed we couldn't celebrate FanMade without bringing you a shade for your nails that's an exact match of the colour of our AMR25 F1 car.

Wear it and you wear the car

Our paint shop and fabrication hall are authorities in their field, but this is a little out of their comfort zone, so we teamed up with London-based nail brand Glaize, best known for its sustainable, gel nail technology, to create a limited run of nail gel kits complete with Aston Martin Aramco-inspired stickers.

Painting nails in the colours of F1 teams is not uncommon in the paddock or the grandstands and it's prevalent on TikTok, where it feeds into the booming #nailtok trend. But unless your team of choice has a very basic vinyl wrap, it's going to be an approximation rather than an exact colour match. What we've developed with Glaize is a world-first. This is an exact match to the AMR25. Wear it and you wear the car.

Finding an exact match is far from simple, though. The colour adorning the AMR25, Aston Martin Racing Green, is the product of thousands of hours in the lab. Thousands of iterations were tried in an effort to understand the key elements: the micas, the reflectivity. Many shades were tested under the light guns: different clear coats, different levels of reflectivity, silver paints underneath green clearcoats. Eventually we developed 'the one'.

"You'll be surprised to hear we don't have any fancy colour matching machines," says Gina Farran, Founder and CEO of Glaize. "It's all based on experience and iteration. We've launched hundreds of colours, and we know how to blend a certain base and tweak it in a specific direction.

"We mixed green and blues to home in on that iconic Aston Martin Racing Green colour. It was simply the case of iterative R&D: creating a sample, putting it on the nail and experimenting until we got a match.

"When we're coating the product, there's a top layer, which is the equivalent of the top coat when you're getting a manicure, and a bottom layer that carries the colour, and an adhesive. We played around with where to put the glitter to mimic how Aston Martin creates light-reactive depth in its livery: in the top layer, so it looks bolder and isn't drowned out by the base colour, or mixed with the pigment in the bottom layer."

Inspired by F1-style R&D, the coating process was more akin to that found in aerospace and automotive rather than cosmetics. "I always realised that our business is a lot more similar to industrial coating than it is to a beauty business, because of the way we do things," says Gina.

"We're not just blending things, we're coating, we're dealing with adhesive, we're dealing with thicknesses of layers and getting that colour within that target thickness. The process is a lot of fun."

The end result is a nail gel that is indistinguishable from the paint on the car. The one notable difference is that it has a gorgeous depth to it that would have our paint shop in raptures. When painting the F1 car, the desire is to produce a coating as lightweight as possible, consistent with having a usable finish. It's a little different with the gel nails.

"The overall thickness of the product needs to always be the same for us – we never vary because we know what works from a performance standpoint," says Gina. "Too thick, and it's difficult for it to hug the nail; too thin, and it's going to look too flimsy and more like a sticker, so we keep the spec very tight."

Putting our finger on the trend

With inspiration for the collaboration coming from fans and the ever-growing #nailtok trend, 100 sets of the limited-edition AMR25 Exact Match nail gel are available for fans to win through The FanMade DROP. A fusion of fandom, fashion and Formula One, our latest I / AM DROP is shaped by fans and their TikTok takes and since it dropped at the beginning of the week of our home race, the British Grand Prix, the nail gel has gained serious appeal, including within our Creator Collective – a platform we launched with TikTok to discover, nurture and showcase content creators.

"It's funny, because when I did my Creator Collective video, I had my nails done to match the Aston Martin colours," says Rhe. "It was a cooking video, so I wanted it to be on-theme. With my nail tech, we tried to replicate the colour of the car, but it was really hard because the car has a metallic glint and it's something you just can't get in a nail polish you buy. We found something similar and added an iridescent glitter to it – but it didn't have the same effect as when you see it on the cars – so getting my hands on this is really exciting."

Rhe, aka @rhetms44, is perhaps best known for the #pitstopplates TikTok cookery series, exploring the flavours of the world, one Formula One destination at a time. Her hands feature in the videos, and nail art is a big part of the presentation.

"It's a way to express yourself and your personality, much like how you choose to dress. Over the last 10 years, it's become more socially acceptable, much like tattoos. I know my generation, when we were at school, acrylic nails were starting to become a thing. It was very basic back then, perhaps 10 or 15 generic styles to be airbrushed or just drawn on – but nail art has evolved.

"A large part of my content is #pitstopplates, and while it isn't face-to-face, I still want my personality to be in the video – so the nails are important to me, because everyone sees my hands when I'm cooking, and it's something on which people will comment."

Rhe is also quick to touch on the fact that this collaboration is a reflection of the sport's growing and increasingly diverse fan base: "There's definitely been a rise in the female demographic around motorsport. F1 has traditionally been thought of as a sport that appeals to middle-aged white men, but over time, and with the likes of Netflix’s Drive to Survive and the whole TikTok culture, that has broadened.

"We're seeing teams collaborate with fashion brands that are more fashion forward rather than just producing a team kit, and we're seeing partnerships with beauty brands. Aston Martin Aramco is really at the forefront here, partnering with brands such as PUMA and ELEMIS. And you see so many makeup artists doing things inspired by teams too.

"It's not that men can't access it, but it makes women feel included; there might be LGBTQ+ people who may wish to use it as well. Collaborations like the one between Aston Martin Aramco and Glaize make it known that this is a safe space for everyone: everyone is included. People can express themselves. Fandom doesn't have to be team tops and baseball caps. It can be… Aston Martin nails! It's a really cool concept, and it's going to be interesting to see it evolve."

WARNING: MAY CAUSE NAIL ENVY