The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1995

On pole position for The Good and the Bad – F1 livery today is the 1995 Formula 1 World Championship. It was a season that was once again dominated by Benetton and Williams,with the two teams winning all but one of the seventeen races on the calendar for that season. The highlight was once again Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill battling it out for the drivers title, but unlike 1994 the gap between the two drivers was a lot bigger with Schumacher winning nine races compared to Hill four race wins which resulted in Schumacher winning the drivers title by thirty-three points.

The season also say a horrible looking yellow car sitting on the grid, and that was to be repeated by another team in the 1996 season. What is interesting about the car design from 1995 though is that McLaren used a design during the season which is surprising similar to the MP4-25 which they revealed yesterday for the 2010 season.

1995 – The Good

Nokia Tyrrell Yamaha

Minardi Scuderia Italia

1995 – The Bad

Parmalat Forti Ford

MTV Simtek Ford

The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1994

We are getting into the mid 90′s now with this series of blog posts looking at the livery designs in Formula 1. Today it’s the turn of the 1994 Formula 1 season, which has to be one of the most memorable season in Formula 1 in the last twenty years, but also one of the most tragic.  It might seem hard to imagine that it was so long ago now, but the 1994 season was when Michael Schumacher won his first of seven Formula 1 World Championships though it is always remembered for the fact that Schumacher and Damon Hill collided during the final race of the season, which left Schumacher winning the championship by a single point.

All the controversy and excitement of the title race though were overshadowed by the tragic loss of life which occurred during the San Marino Grand Prix where Roland Ratzenberger was killed after a crash in qualifying, and during the race itself the three time world champion Ayrton Senna also died after crashing. Senna’s death especially sent a shock wave around the world at the passing of one of motorsports greatest ever drivers in such a fashion, and it resulted in massive changes being brought in to improve safety in Formula 1. Those changes would in a couple of years time quite drastically change the design of a Formula 1 car.

I was rather young at the time, but the death of Ayrton Senna was one of the most upsetting experience in my life. Like many people who watch Formula 1, especially when you are young it is easy to dream about being a Formula 1 driver, and like a lot of other people I think Ayrton Senna was my idol.

Anyway, lets get on with it. Below you will see my picks from “The Good” and “The Bad” of F1 livery from 1994 and if you want to view the previous entries in this series of blog posts you can find them here.

1994 – The Good

Rothmans Williams Renault

Team Lotus

Broker Sauber Mercedes

1994 – The Bad

Pacific Grand Prix Ltd

Tourtel Larrousse F1

Minardi Scuderia Italia

1994 – I don’t know!

Footwork Ford

I really don’t know if the 1994 Footwork should fall under The Good or The Bad. Personally I quite like it, but I’ve always rather liked Footwork for some reason but is it actually a good looking car?

The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1993

Today say the launch of the first 2010 spec Formula 1 car in the form the new Ferrari F10 and it is rather interesting to see a lot more white on the new car which gives it some common ground with the livery used on the Ferrari F93A. As you might guess from it’s name, the F93A was the Ferrari that was sitting on the 1993 Formula 1 grid and it that grid that I’m having a look at today. The big three of the early 90′s, McLaren, Williams  and Benetton didn’t seen much change when it came to their livery designs and though the McLaren of this period is rather iconic these days, they wouldn’t exactly jump out of the pack at you for good or bad reasons.

The 1993 grid thankfully didn’t have any purple nosed Brabham’s on it but there was one in particular which hits the rather garish button. You can see my good and bad picks from the 1993 Formula 1 car liveries below.

If you want to have a look at the previous “The Good and the Bad – F1 livery” blog posts you can find them here. Been very good to see the number of hits they have been getting, and the number of comments about the 1991 season for the 7Up Jordan. Thanks very much for that.

1993 – The Good

Sasol Jordan

Team Lotus

Minardi Team

1993 – The Bad

Tyrrell Racing Organisation

Larrousse F1

The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1992

Yesterday say the start of a series of what should be twenty posts in total when I posted “The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1991″. The series is me taking a look back over the last twenty years of Formula 1 (including 2010) and picking out what I think are the best, and the worst car liveries to be seen in Formula 1.

Today I’ve been looking at the 1992 Formula 1 cars and it’s been a pleasant surprise. 1992 didn’t see any real stand-outs like the Team 7Up Jordan from 1991 which going from the comments yesterday is for most people one of the best looking Formula 1 cars ever, but overall the cars on the grid in 1992 all had fairly good liveries. Well all apart from one, and that was a car from a rather famous name in the motorsport world. Take a look below at “The Good and the Bad” of 1992

The Good

Sasol Jordan Yamaha

Central Park Venturi Larrousse

Minardi Team

Footwork Mugen Honda

The Bad

Motor Racing Developments Ltd. - Brabham

The Good and the Bad – F1 livery from 1991

Yesterday, the 25th January 2010 say the first launch of a 2010 Formula 1 car. The car in question was the new Mercedes GP car from the team that was formally Honda and then title winners Brawn GP last year, but it wasn’t in fact a new car that was being unveiled yesterday, it was in fact just the new livery for Mercedes GP painted on last years Brawn GP car.  That gave me an idea for a series of blog posts though. Between now and the first race in Bahrain on the 14th March I’m hoping to run through what have been, in my opinion the best and worst looking car liveries to be seen in Formula 1 each year, since the 1991 season to the upcoming 2010 season. That will be twenty blog posts in total.

Why am I starting with 1991 season? Well for one that was when I started following Formula 1, and if I only went back a few years with this I reckon it would be rather dull. The 90′s in my opinion say a lot more good looking F1 cars than we have seen recently, and a lot more variety.

So lets get on with it then.

1991 – The Good

Team 7Up Jordan

Automobiles Gonfaronaise Sportive (AGS)

1991 – The Bad

Coloni Racing Srl

Fondmetal F1 SpA

Cos-and-effect-worth

Formula 1 in 2010, the season dominated by Cosworth? It seems strange to think that we will be seeing ten cars on the Formula 1 grid this year running the exact same engine, and the other sixteen cars will be split between three other engine manufactures. 2010 will see one of the biggest Formula 1 grids in years, but the smallest number of engine makes it quite some time.

Cosworth F1 engines ready to ship for the 2010 season

Compare that to 1991 which had nine different engine manufactures spread across eighteen teams.

Looking back at the state of Formula 1 during the 1991 season (it was the season I started to follow F1) I can see a few comparisons between it and the upcoming 2010 season. The most notable one to me is the number of small privateer teams taking part, which is something we are going to see again in 2010 with four brand new teams taking part, and at least six teams on the grid which people will likely consider to be small fry when it comes to the F1 world. Though that is yet to be determined.

What the 2010 season lacks though when compared to 1991 is variety in the engine manufactures, and it has me wondering what the cause of that is? Especially when five of the teams will be running the Ford Cosworth engine. That Cosworth engine is fairly good though as we seen from the 2006 season, though it was somewhat prone to kicking the bucket if I remember correctly, but surely there must have been other engine manufactures who would have been keen to get involved in Formula 1?

How about Judd? They still have a relatively strong presence in the sports car racing world with a number of teams still running Judd engines in LMP 1 & 2 in the Le Mans series last year. Another British based option that seems to have a strong presence now in the Le Mans series is Zytek and they have in past been the sole engine supplier for Formula 3000 between 1996 and 2004, and they also supplied the engines for A1 Grand Prix between 2005 and 2008. Personally it those sort of engine manufactures who aren’t involved with the big car manufactures and that have more of a focus on motorsport that I would like to see getting involved in Formula 1. It’s for that same reason that I’m very glad to see Dallara building the chassis for Campos, and I would of loved to have seen Lola back in Formula 1. The big car manufactures might bring the brand names with them that help set Formula 1 apart, but for a lot of them motorsport is just a good way to advertise.

What seems more amazing though is that other car manufactures haven’t stepped up to plate to provide engines, or stayed at the plate as the case may be. Perhaps the most notable absentee from the Formula 1 grid is the Volkswagen Audi group, the fact that they have had no presence what so ever in Formula 1 is rather hard to get ones head around, especially when you consider the car manufactures that fall under that banner nowadays. Volkswagen have shown some interest in Formula 1 though recently with the sport trying to reduce cost, though unlike Honda, BMW and Toyota they seem to be more interested in the idea of just supplying engines instead of running their own team which seems like a extremely smart idea just from a cost point of view.

That Honda, BMW and Toyota have all pulled out Formula 1 over the last year and half is rather sad to see, though Honda and Toyota especially are companies that really didn’t seem to have much clue as to what they where doing when it came to running a Formula 1 team and to me those two where really just there to help advertise their brand. It would be wrong to say that they have no interest in motorsport outside of advertising, but when it came to the Formula 1 teams? I don’t think either company really had a great deal of passion for sport itself. Those three companies though all dropped out due to the cost of running a Formula 1 team, but that none of them have continued to supply engines to other teams when they already have them developed baffles me. Supplying engines would keep their names involved in Formula 1 and it would also be a far more cost effective way of being involved, and possibly far more fruitful as the teams they would be supplying could be far more capable of actually doing something in Formula 1.

How come the 2010 grid is split between four engine manufactures though? What reason is there for that? For the four new teams all running Cosworth engines in might have something to do with the FIA and Max Mosley, as it was rumoured that they had to agree to run Cosworth engines to secure entry into the 2010 season as Max and the FIA didn’t want the car manufactures having more control over the sport, but hopefully that is not the case though I guess we will never know for sure. Personally I find it somewhat more likely that Cosworth provided the new teams with a cheaper option when it came to the signing an engine supply deal, as I really can’t see running a Ferrari engine being cheap.

That no new engine manufactures have stepped up (Cosworth already having an engine developed from their last spell in F1) though is somewhat harder to understand. For the likes of Judd and Zytek it can perhaps be put down to cost and the level of technology and development needed for a Formula 1 engine. They might be supplying quality engines for sports car racing or other single-seater formulas, but even with reduced engine capacity and electronics, Formula 1 engines are still pushing the very boundaries of engine development. As for other car manufactures? Perhaps all the political turmoil that disrupted Formula 1 in 2009 and delayed the announcement of the participants for the 2010 season simply didn’t leave enough time for anyone to make a decision on whether or not to supply engines, let alone actually develop one?

Hopefully 2011 will see more engine manufactures getting involved in Formula 1 as it would be good to see, and good for the sport in the same way that the new teams joining the grid for 2010 has been, and even though we should be seeing ten cars on the grid all running the same Cosworth engine, it’s also good to see them back in the sport.

(Only took me five days to finish this blog post!)

Batman: Origami Killers Part 2

Welcome to part two of Batman: Origami Killers! I would say excuse the lighting, but really the production qualities on this aren’t exactly meant to be good lol

The End!

F1 Testing Sense

With the start of the 2010 Formula 1 season looming large in the teams rear view mirrors there has been a lot of talk about the lack of testing available to the teams before the first race of the season in Bahrain on the 14th March, and also that a number of teams aren’t taking full advantage of the limited number of pre-season test days allowed by the FIA. Reading “Is 2010 the Year the F1 Testing Died?” on Sidepodcast got me thinking about the subject as well, and it does seem rather counter productive for F1 teams to not use all the track time they can get, but decisions are rarely made by Formula 1 teams without them having a good reason for it.

Only having 15 days and 15,000 kilometres of testing allowed between the 1st February and the first race in Bahrain, would normally make you expect ever team to be trying to get the most track time out of the very strict limits the FIA have set down, but with Red Bull, Force India and Sauber among the teams opting out the first test of the season at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo (one of the tracks featured in Gran Turismo PSP) in Spain you have to wonder what is going on?

Circuit Ricardo Tormo, Spain

Is it the track? Is it simply not a useful test venue? It is possible that some teams will have weighed in the factor that the Circuit Ricardo Tormo isn’t on the Formula 1 race calendar when they made their decision not to attended the first test of the season, but the circuit has often been used for Formula 1 testing before so it clearly is a circuit where the teams can collect the relevant data they need. Skipping the test at Ricardo Tormo though means missing three days of very valuable track time in a season when mid-season testing is forbidden, that it makes up one fifth of the track time the teams have available to them outside of the actual race weekends!

I see two far more likely causes though:

1) The ever shortening winter break

2) Test track locations

The 2009 season only finished on the 1st November 2009 in Abu Dhabi, that new gem in the Bernie Ecclestone and Hermann Tilke plan to create the worlds most boring racing circuits, and by the time we reach the 14th March the teams are expected to have a car ready to race on another off Tilke’s masterpieces! The 2009 season didn’t start until the 29th March, which might only have given the teams a couple of extra weeks development time before the fireworks started, but it is a couple of weeks which would off been very valuable for teams this season. Now last year did see massive rule changes which caused the teams to start with a totally clean slate when it came to designing the 2009 cars, and it very clearly caused several teams major headaches and that is not the case with the 2010 cars, but 2010 brings another factor into play and that is budget reductions. With no major rule changes though surely car development costs will be reduced? They may very well be reduced, though Formula 1 car design will always be pushing the boundaries so it will always be an expensive business. What budget reductions will bring to the table though is slower car development as teams have a reduced number of staff compared to previous years, and less money and time to spend developing the car in a wind tunnel or using computational fluid dynamics to help in designing the car. In the past the teams running with lower budgets have often been forced to either start the season with the car from the previous year, or at least leave it close to the first race before having a car ready for the track. Having extra races on the calendar is great for the fans, but even without budget reductions the ever-expanding calendar and shortening winter break has meant that teams are being pushed to the limit of what they are capable of doing during the winter break.

The other cause that I see for teams choosing to skip testing? Again it’s something that comes down to the tracks being used, but it has nothing to do with how good the track is for testing, or if it on the Formula 1 calendar or not. The problem I see with the tracks being used are the locations, and the budget reductions come into play here again. All the pre-season testing this year is taking part in Spain (apart from one example which I’ll get to) which is generally a fine location as it is fairly central and easy for most teams to get when compared to travelling to Bahrain to test, but if the FIA is seriously looking to cut spending in Formula 1 why are the teams being forced to travel abroad to test at all? Apart from a few exceptions, most F1 teams are based in the UK and a big amount of Formula 1 testing was not so long ago done at Silverstone, a track which Force India for example are right next door to! Why none of the official test days now happen at Silverstone seems to defy belief, especially when the cost of transporting everything needed for a test day would be greatly reduced for most teams. When the FIA are giving permission to F1′s new boys, USF1 to test at Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama can they not see that being able to test at a more local circuit is a benefit to the teams?

Will we see the FIA changing anything when it comes to Formula 1 testing for 2011? One can only hope that with the new folk in charge in Paris we will see them make some changes to testing regulations, perhaps even bring back mid-season testing, but part of me thinks that it’s just as likely that they will try to reduce it even further in an attempt to save money, but then people in charge of such things rarely think with much common sense.

Dakar 2010 – After the Fact

From the 1st January to the 16th January the 2010 Dakar Rally thundered it ways across South America, travelling a massive 9,030 kilometres through Argentina and Chile, and it was the first time I’ve have been able to follow the full event thanks to:

1) Actually remembering when it was on for once

2) The daily highlight shows on British Eurosport

Dakar 2010 Kicking up the sand Credit: boston.com

The Dakar Rally has been something that has always interested me, and really who wouldn’t find the idea interesting? Man and machine tested to their limits as they battle their way across some of the most demanding terrain this world has to offer, and at the same time some of the most stunning. As an event which only occurs once a year though, the Dakar can easily slip by you if you aren’t paying attention, well I find that to be the case anyway. Though the Dakar Rally is a big event in the motorsport world, it is not something you are ever likely to see mentioned in mainstream media in Britain.

Thanks to a little heads-up on the internet marvel that is Twitter several weeks before the end of 2009 I was actually aware of when the 2010 Dakar Rally started, and thanks to the coverage on British Eurosport I was able to keep up to date with what happened on each stage. Eurosport did of course advertise their coverage as live coverage of the Dakar Rally 2010, which was perhaps slightly miss leading as you might think they meant live coverage of the actual stage each day, but they did actually say “Live from the bivouac” and that turned out to be a better way of covering the Dakar than covering the stages live I think. What Eurosport offered was a live highlights show from the rallies bivouac (camp) each night at 10pm UK time, so that they could offer you live interviews and a look behind the scenes of what goes on in the bivouac where all the competitors and teams camp and do repairs after the day’s stage was complete. On top of the great insight from the bivouac the Eurosport live Dakar show also covered highlights from the day’s stage and considering that a Dakar stage doesn’t have a totally defined course, and it covers hundreds on kilometres I’m not exactly sure how well live coverage from an actual stage would work. The only thing I could say against the Eurosport coverage was really that it wasn’t long enough, 45 minutes each day really isn’t enough to fully cover all that happens on a Dakar stage so the focus was always on the top competitors in the cars and bike classes.

Dakar 2010 That is what you call a hill! Credit: boston.com

As for the rally itself? Well the headlines have been dominated by Volkswagen who took the top three spots in the car class as was expected really, though the BMW’s did look promising and come next year they may give Volkswagen a major challenge. The Dakar was as challenging as ever though, and stage five showed just how dangerous it can be. One thing is for sure though, I won’t be missing it next year!

Batman: Origami Killers

Following on from yesterday’s Killer Origami Folding post I came up with this idea while trying to make some more killer origami birds. Welcome to Batman: Origami Killers!

To be continued? Perhaps…