[Captain Ahab Jr]

I've been involved in a few lightweight paint and vinyl film experiments and track tests on race cars.

Once worked on a 12 lap qualifying only F1 car where we only wiped the bodywork with a light stopper and then put the colour straight on. Holding the panel up you could see pin pricks of light through the panel. The bodywork construction was 0.09mm carbon skin either side of a 4mm thick paper honeycomb core but the weight of the paint was still about 25% of the total weight.

Vinyl film can be lighter weight than road car paint but compared to a well painted race car it will be heavier

Vinyl film should be used nowhere near aero surfaces as any areas where the self adhesive bond fails will cause surface imperfections that can cause an aero performance loss.

As for paints metallic paints are around 15% heavier than the same colour non-metallic paint.

Different colours have different weights for the same thicknesses, the difference is from the materials used for each pigment colour

There is only one way to save paint on a race car and that is to paint less of it and leave more exposed carbon. You just have to look at the last few Ferrari's to see what I mean.