WANTED: 1X BUCKET WHITE PAINT

February 6 2012
by Seb Patrick
4 comments

PLEASE SEND TO SAUBER F1 TEAM HEADQUARTERS, HINWIL, SWITZERLAND. NEEDED URGENTLY TO PAINT NOSES OF C31 CARS.

I mean, really. Having had the worst livery on the grid for two years, you’d assume Sauber could do nothing but improve. And to be fair to them… they have improved. Well, they’ve improved half the car, anyway.

Certainly, from the tail end up to the cockpit, this is everything the 2011 Sauber should have been (well, what it should have been was something other than plain white with a bit of red and grey, but let’s not quibble over semantics). The sponsor logos don’t look like they’ve been thrown on as an afterthought, and as they’re now almost all entirely red (apart from the Telcel logo, now sensibly integrated into the rear wing colour scheme) they certainly don’t look glaringly out of place, either. Even the blue NEC logo on the side of the monocoque is just about forgiveable – although it lends a slightly odd feeling to the car when everything from the cockpit rearwards is red, and then logos forwards of the driver’s head are blue. But these are minor niggles.

But then you get to the nose. The nose that they’ve… just forgotten to paint, it seems.

Oh yeah, sure. They might claim that it’s a deliberate part of the livery. But if it were… then why isn’t there a red trim along the edge, as there is the black section at the back? Why, too, does it not actually appear to run parallel with its companion section? Why does it end at such an arbitrary place – further up the nose than one sensible option (on the contour of the stepped nose), but lower down it than the other (at the cockpit edge)? And why… well, just why, basically?

I’m actually starting to think they’re deliberately winding me up, now…

4 Comments

Norman

February 6, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Reply

The design is pretty grim, but the lack of colour makes it a bore. Swap the black/grey to the bright cyan blue of the TelMex logo, and you’ve instantly got a brand and identity. Why wouldn’t you want to make these cars look good?

vert

February 6, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Reply

I’m just glad they’ve finally moved on from the BMW design. I also hate how the grey on the front isn’t split with a red line as well. Hopefully that is added during the season.

Tommy

February 6, 2012 at 10:05 pm
Reply

I agree, for a second year in a row the Sauber livery is lazy. The black could have looked pretty cool but have no idea what they are trying to do with it this year. Also what’s with the single red stripe and not one to separate the other bit of black and white. Stupid.

Pike

February 7, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Reply

I like it and for me its a nice improve from last year’s one (the worst of the grid). They made a clever decision when trying to hide the horrible broken nose that most cars will be runing in 2012. So, we all know that dark colors hide the shapes of a car, and there you have it. Imagine that nose in white and you will see what Im talking about.