Monthly Archives: January 2010

Renault looks like a Renault; Sauber looks like a BMW

January 31, 2010 | 9 Comments

Launchstravaganza! Despite being a Sunday, two teams have chosen to unveil their 2010 liveries (although only one on a 2010-spec car) as testing at Valencia gets underway today. First out of the blocks were Sauber, with a car that looks like an early ’90s back-of-the-grid effort, with nary a sponsor to be seen…

I was hoping for a plain black car from the team, but they’ve been perhaps mindful of the fact that Virgin are likely to roll out in black, and that there are far fewer white cars on the grid this season than last. Consquently, it’s a rather curious tweaking of the BMW-Sauber livery of last year – only with the blue sidepods replaced with black, additional black front and rear wings, and the usual gap in the “BMW style” nose pattern filled in to make a single block. All rather strange, but it’s a rather smart-looking car. Let’s hope they get some sponsors on there – rather than sticking with the drivers’ names on the engine cover in large type – before Bahrain, though.

Next we come to a rather more exciting proposition – albeit one that is similarly, and in a rather worrying trend for F1 in general, lacking in sponsor logos – and that’s the Renault:

Turns out the blurry picture I posted earlier in the week was the real deal, and despite the fact that it’s already dividing people, I love this. It’s bright, and it’s garish… but it’s also completely, undeniably, Renault. And those uniforms are cracking, as well. Having had the worst livery in F1 for two seasons (07-08) and a pretty weak effort last year as well, this is a huge step up, and I’d say it’s an early contender for best of ’10. Am I alone in this? What do you folks think?

Meet the new McLaren livery, same as the old McLaren livery…

January 29, 2010 | 5 Comments

Once again that man Jake Humphrey is tweeting pics from the scene. More later, but while there’ll surely be a LOT of discussion of the MP4-25, it’ll be more about what’s under the paint job than the livery itself. Here it is, anyway:

Interesting to note, incidentally (as gareth already has in the comments just as it occurred to me!) that Santander no longer seem to appear on the car, but are still on the drivers’ uniforms…

New Ferrari

January 28, 2010 | 3 Comments

Well, look – it’s a Ferrari, it’s got a bit more white on it than last season (I quite like the touch of having the front wing supports be white as well as the wing itself), but aside from that it’s exactly as you’d expect, even down to still having that quite dated-looking Marlboro barcode thing.  So there’s not really much else to say about it – to be honest, the Red Bull-esque nose is probably a more interesting aspect than the livery. Here it is, anyway :

What I do find rather amusing, though, is the way the uniforms look like they’ve been designed to give Massa and Alonso the look of rather womanly hips…

Is this the new Renault livery?

January 27, 2010 | 7 Comments

Found on grandprixgames.org’s forum. If it is, I cautiously approve. Hard to tell much due to the blurring, but Jordan already proved in ’97 and ’98 that red makes for a nice complement to black and yellow (I imagine on the real thing, it’ll look a bit less pink than it does here!) – and it’s hard to argue that the bulk of it isn’t quite traditionally Renault.

Not long to go until we find out the truth, anyway – Renault are scheduled to launch their new car on 31st Jan…

Update (28.01): Another possible image has been found, this one looking like concept art. Not sure when it dates from, so if it’s fictional it could just be that the above is a render based on it – but I’m still willing to stick my neck out and say the 2010 car could end up looking something like it…

New Mercedes!

January 25, 2010 | 7 Comments

And it turns out that that Photoshop mockup was actually closer to the truth than we’d anticipated! Official pictures will surely follow, but for now, Jake Humphrey has already Twittered some pictures of the new car at the launch. And here it is!

Update: More pictures above, and here are my thoughts. It’s… underwhelming, to be honest. Given that the one thing we knew all along was that it would be silver, I think we mostly expected something a bit more… dynamic? Exciting? Certainly not just a photoshopped version of a Brawn (although, that said, maintaining the “swoosh” from the nose is a pleasing link to the team’s prior incarnation). The turquoise doesn’t really work at all in such thin lines and splashes – there either needed to be more of it, to make it stand out more, or it not be there at all. And what really doesn’t work is the fact that the other splash colour, on the numbers and some logos, is red – the two don’t go together. Red alone would have worked, but of course would have invited further comparisons with a McLaren – something also unavoidable when you look at the driver uniforms, which really are reminiscent of the Hakkinen/Coulthard era. It’s not a great way to mark out a new, exciting era – and nor does it feel like a suitably impressive-looking car for Schumacher to make his return in. It’s just, well, kind of bland, isn’t it? On the other hand, it can be argued that having it be entirely silver (especially with the red numbers) is more of a callback to the actual 1950s Silver Arrows – but if that’s the case, why the turquoise, or the weird “spray-paint” style splash of black on the engine cover? It sort of feels caught between being two different things, which is a shame – as this was an opportunity to do something really stunning. Ah well. Not a disaster, but let’s hope it’s not a sign of things to come for the other teams’ designs.

IT BEGINS

January 20, 2010 | 5 Comments

Spanish sports paper Marca, suddenly taking an interest in all things Scuderia (I suspect it’s to do with a certain driver and a certain bank), seem to have uncovered the first picture of a 2010 livery! It’s a Ferrari, so don’t expect too many surprises, although it is a little different, which is nice :

I’d imagine that picture must have come from the filming of an advert, as Valentino Rossi’s test session today in last year’s car (which, shape-wise, the above seems to be – presumably teams can’t get round the testing ban by running their new season cars on film!) saw it run in ’09 livery. But anyway, it’s quite interesting! Slightly more radical than we might have expected, in that Santander have been allowed to paint the wings white (calling to mind the late ’90s/early 2000s cars) but the thick white strip along the endplate, smartly matching the height of the wing, also lends it a slightly retro feel (I’m picturing that uncharacteristic 1993 car, though I doubt that’s a deliberate invocation!)

But yes, I generally approve – if even Ferrari can make tweaks to their usually-largely-unchanging design, then it bodes well for potentially the most exciting livery launch season in years…

(thanks to Greg for the heads up!)

UPDATE: Despite not having officially unveiled the car yet, Ferrari have issued press photos of the drivers’ new overalls, at the same time confirming Alonso’s helmet design for this season.

Lesser-Spotted F1 Liveries

January 11, 2010 | 15 Comments

A guest article by Greg “Ned Flanders” Morland

Some F1 liveries are iconic. The rosso corsa Ferrari, as used for decades. The red and white Marlboro McLaren, raced by legends such as Senna and Prost. The variations of the blue and white colour scheme used by Williams during their glory years in the ’80s and ’90s. The Silver Arrows Mercedes which was synonymous with both Mercedes in the ’50s and McLaren over 40 years later.

But not all designs reach this level of prominence. Some are consigned to the dustbin after no more than one or two events. Some are never raced at all. Others are never even intended to be raced! Created for reasons as varied as charity promotion, sponsorship changes and regulation disputes, this is a collection of obscure F1 liveries.

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2010 Livery Speculation

January 5, 2010 | 14 Comments

The 2010 season is looking to be one of the most exciting in years for those of us interested in the changing face of F1 liveries – with four entirely new teams joining the grid, two others rebranding, and at least one other set to change colour scheme as the result of a defunct sponsorship deal. As we wait for the launches season (now that it’s been confirmed that the mooted “joint launch” won’t be happening) to begin in earnest this month, I thought it high time to go through team by team and try to get an idea of how the 26 cars might look…

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