Yes, folks! It’s time for another exciting installment of Rounding Up 2012 Liveries That Are Basically Almost Exactly The Same As Their 2011 Equivalents! And here’s your host, F1 Colours’ Seb Patrick!

Let’s look at Red Bull first, then, since (a) they’re reigning champions and so deserve it, (b) they have the least in the way of changes to talk about and (c) they’ve been strangely shy about putting pictures of their car online:

 So, yeah. Not much new here at all, really. Basically, the front and rear wing endplates have now been made (mostly) red, presumably at the behest of Total. And, er… that really is about it, as far as I can see. Yay.

Talk of red endplates gives us a nice segue into Lotus, about whom I had the vague hope that they might have dropped said similarly-coloured wings. But no – they’re still there, present and correct:

  Actually, as it happens, this bit of styling did grow on me as last season went on – I’d still rather the car didn’t have it, but it didn’t look terrible on track.

Other than that – and entirely sensibly – it’s largely the same as last year, with the only changes being reshuffling of sponsors. Lada are gone, their spot taken by a possibly slightly too large and obtrusive anti-dandruff shampoo ad. Fellow Unilever brand Rexona also make it to the engine cover. The team still don’t seem to have learned that a big yellow Lotus badge doesn’t look all that great on this livery – but they have at least improved its nose cone placement, extending the gold tip and setting the badge within it in quite smart fashion.

Generally, with less cluttering of sponsors than last year and – that badge aside – smarter placement, this is overall an improvement on what was already a pretty darned stonking livery to begin with. Not that they can claim credit for the idea of it, of course, but let’s move on from that now.

Finally, then, to Toro Rosso:

  Different from the car that started last season… but a lot closer to the one that finished it. I was hoping that given an entirely new slate, the sponsor-brought gold and red sections would be better-integrated into the car – but it wasn’t to be the case. The all-red rear wing for Cepsa works better, but having the front endplates be gold makes the profile view a little odd. Otherwise, though, one great improvement is the removal of last year’s red motif from the nose – it tidies things up, although to be honest I still think the team should think about dropping the swirly patterns that still adorn the car. They worked when there were no sponsors other than Red Bull – but now there are more characteristically F1-esque logos dotted here and there, they feel quite out of place, and a cleaner look would suit the car a lot better, I think.

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