Tag: Mercedes

And you thought the livery reveal stream was bad…

‘It’s my birthday and my mum was serving up a speciality; scrambled eggs and disappointment.’ Just one of witticisms by Will in The Inbetweeners, and while it’s neither my birthday, nor did I have scrambled eggs for my admittedly late breakfast, there were certainly generous servings of disappointment this morning. I feel it wouldn’t be out of place to put this amongst the worst livery/car launches in Formula 1, if not the worst. I think it was the Racing Point launch that I slated the most last year, with its main charge being a lack of originality and refusal to get on with it. Compare that to today and the contrast is, to say the least, stark. Was that really 45 minutes of press conference? Did the journalists ask mostly about Mercedes’ and Lewis Hamilton’s future and not the new partnership or the season ahead? It just seemed unnecessary for a livery launch. Of course it doesn’t help that it was compèred by some random bloke I’ve not seen before and not David Croft, who yes I have been scathing about in the past but he does have a personality and he will inject some soul into proceedings which should’ve been an otherwise bland event. The three on stage today had the charisma of Simon Lazenby’s right thumb.

It seemed a little poorly organised too. They had to say oh yeah we’re unveiling the car in 15 minutes downstairs so you may want to run your cameras and other stuff downstairs! Surely you’d brief them on the order of proceedings first? Just a little strange to me.

Maybe I missed something. I did leave the stream to grab some breakfast (some frosted shreddies if you were wondering) and they had paused for a couple of minutes while the hosts had moved downstairs. Again poor organisation. But twitter didn’t exactly blow up so I can’t have missed Toto Wolf twerking to Brian Tyler’s F1 theme on stage. Damn. Maybe next year then.

And then we move to the livery. The way they were bigging it up, we naturally were going to see some new additions to the scheme. INEOS’ dark red/burgundy affair plus the Petronas green on a silver and black car doesn’t even sound okay. The matte effect makes for some interest at the front of the car, but is soon lost as the car must resort back to its shiny, three-pointed star motif over the engine cover. Don’t even get me started on that roll-hoop. Mercedes managed to take one of 2019’s best schemes and make it into 2020’s worst. I’m not even sure Williams can top that as Formula 1’s biggest disappointment in 2020. I mean I don’t know how you incorporate burgundy into the original colours and scheme, I’m nowhere near being a graphic design artist, but I do know is that the W11 is not how you do it.

To rob a point off my Twitter timeline, this is the look of the car that more than likely, will set a new record for consecutive championships won, as well as matching Schumi’s drivers’ title haul, and that is the biggest shame. You think of these iconic cars: MP4/4, F2004, R25, BGP-001, RB9, even the W05 and they all look fantastic; worthy cars to take up the mantle of being mechanical royalty. The W11 will likely add to that list, but stick out like a sore thumb for the wrong reasons

Can anyone really match Mercedes this year? I don’t think so. Can anyone match Lewis Hamilton this year? I don’t think so. Time will tell if the Brackley based outfit lifted off in 2019 to focus on 2020. I guess we’ll have to wait for testing, failing that Australia, before we find out. It would be nice to see a Bottas 2.5 this season. He’s just lacking that little bit to become a genuine title contender. We’ll see enough from Valtteri for him to keep his seat, but no more in my opinion. It would’ve been scandalous for Rosberg not to win a title in those cars and how hard he worked Lewis. You just don’t get the same feeling from Bottas.
George Russell will also be a strong factor in the Finn’s future. It was difficult to gauge his first season, and if Williams make gains then I’m sure Toto will be watching closely, but that’s for another preview.

Unless we see a more consistent Red Bull this year, it’s difficult to see where any other legitimate title contenders may come from. Ferrari maybe? But it’s Ferrari so we know how it ends up. You’d be pushed to find anyone who realistically would back anyone other than Lewis Hamilton for the title, outside of Italy, and maybe The Netherlands, at least. Let’s just hope we get a good championship in the process.

The Silver Arrow is actually well… silver!

I’ll own up, I overslept this morning. So much so that I actually missed the reveal of of the W10. All I can say is someone pinch me because I still must be dreaming. That 2019 Mercedes is beautiful. It’s not until Mercedes unveiled this masterpiece, that I realised how messy the 2017 and 2018 liveries were. I don’t think I would’ve said that until seeing the 2019 revision, maybe it just shows how tidy this livery is. Remember I’m no expert in graphic design, I mean have you seen my logo? But I remember when Chain Bear F1 released a livery design explainer video, he always said that design should always follow the shape of the chassis. While Merc did do this for the past two seasons, it’s only now that it has been perfected. Having one thicker, green line, rather than several thinner ones works better because the thicker line is so much stronger. The movement of grey to actual silver or chrome is also a big step up. Either that or the grey just pops more under light this year. The end result is still much better.

I haven’t even gotten to the fade on the engine cover yet. Personally, it’s much more effective from far away. But I still don’t know what to think about it up close, is it possible only to see the fade from afar? I don’t know, I can still be persuaded. Let me know what you think. At the current moment, the numbers are only white, not the usual red and blue for Lewis and Valtteri respectively. I hope this is only for the shakedown runs, this is the nearest F1 has gotten to personalised numbering.

When F1 first unveiled the new driver number system for 2014, I thought it would lead to MotoGP style development where the number became the drivers’ brand. I’m still very disappointed this hasn’t taken off, particularly in light of Liberty’s plan to make the drivers seem more like heroes and bringing them to the forefront. I seriously hope that this develops in the world of Formula 1 soon. I don’t think it would distract from MotoGP either, we’ve already heard that drivers’ won’t adopt Vale’s 46 because they think it’s sacred, and rightly so. When most of the premier class have their numbers above 30, and the top riders have numbers in the 90s, it’s clear to see that we wouldn’t distract from Marc Marquez or Jorge Lorenzo.

Anyway, back to Merc. Can we all just appreciate they didn’t reveal that camo livery today? Firstly because we wouldn’t have seen this sheer perfection on the W10, but also because let’s be honest, it was quite frankly hideous. I hope we get to understand why they teased 2019 this way, but right now the feeling of sheer relief is just too much to care about anything else.

Valtteri, it’s Esteban

Christ, did I really stoop that low just to use that God awful meme? Apparently Lewis wouldn’t re-sign unless Valtteri was his team mate, I hope this wasn’t true. No offence to Valtteri, but part of the pull of Formula 1 is seeing the best drivers battling the best cars. The difference between the Ferrari and Mercedes should’ve lent itself to a four-way title battle. If Charles Leclerc can keep performing like he has in his new team then I can’t help but feel it will be Mercedes’ Achilles’ heel. It saddens me that arguably the best driver of his generation didn’t fancy testing himself against a Danny Ric for example. I hope edgy beard Bottas, means we get an edgy driver Bottas. He was unlucky in the first half of the season, granted, but he was nowhere near the pace in the second half, Russia aside. There are thoughts that Bottas won’t make the end of the season, and who can blame them when you have Ocon in reserve. I hope Bottas ups his pace and can mount a serious title challenge this year, but it’s going to take a hell of amount of work.

Lewis will do what he’s always done. He’ll have a shaky first 5-10 rounds, sounding really unmotivated on the radio, then dupe me into thinking he’s had enough and will retire at the end of the season to concentrate on his music or his collection with Tommy Hilfiger. I can guarantee I will write something similar to this by China. I honestly thought he was gone at the end of last year, instead he put in a perfect summer and second half of the season to take a comfortable 5^th title. If he’s under more pressure this year goodness knows he’ll do, but I know he’ll be fast.

If gap continues to close at the top like it has done the past couple of years then I’m going to be bold and say they’ll finish second in the constructors’. However I’d probably back Lewis for the drivers’. Hopefully it’s more than a two way battle this year, and with Leclerc in the scarlet car I’d say we have a strong chance of that being the case. We may end up with a feisty Bottas too, so it’ll be close at the top, but I have a feeling that experience and a tendency not to bottle may just prevail.