The first article in this series was originally going to be about Jordan Grand Prix, but following the news about a new Lotus team’s planned entry into F1 in 2010, I couldn’t help but get thinking about Lotus liveries. After all, of all the new teams entering next year, Lotus is the name that will get even the more casual observers thinking about famous colour schemes – I can think of three or four instantly evocative classics off the top of my head that it would immediately be great to see a return of.

So in taking a skim over the history of Lotus liveries (a less detailed one than I’ll be doing for the likes of Jordan and Benetton, for whom I’ll cover each individual season – Lotus competed for 38 years, after all!), I’ll also be speculating over whether any of the classic colour schemes could feasibly make a  reappearance  in 2010 – or will we see something new entirely?

1958-1968 – British Racing Green

When Lotus started racing – in case you didn’t know – Grand Prix cars were painted in national colour schemes – and, as a British team, they hence raced in predominantly green cars, in that distinctive and classic “British Racing Green” shade. Even in those days, however, the team gave the colour scheme a distinctive look of their own, by adding a thick yellow stripe (presumably drawn from the marque’s yellow-and-green logo) that ran from the nose along the centre of the car. This gave the team a visual identity that it would carry through its entire existence – as evidenced by the fact that, when there wasn’t a tobacco company painting the car their own colour, the team would always revert back to some combination of these colours. Rightly, too, as it’s an absolute classic – although it’s also arguable as to whether it’s now a quite dated look.

Chances of seeing it on the grid in 2010? … and there’s the rub. Assuming the new Lotus team don’t sign a sponsorship deal that dictates their livery (in which case, all the speculation in this article is invalidated!), then a green car with yellow trim would seem the obvious design to go for. But how would it look on a 2010-spec car? Modern F1 cars can look great in green, but not since the early ’90s Benetton have we seen yellow and green together (and in that case, besides, the yellow of Camel was the dominant colour). Still, though, if they want to put “Lotus” in people’s minds, then it really is the only way to go: 8/10.

1968-1971 – Gold Leaf

It may not seem like that much to look at now, but the Gold Leaf Lotus is of course one of the most famous and significant liveries in F1 history – being the first ever sponsored Grand Prix car. As such, it employed a colour scheme never before seen on an F1 grid – predominantly red (but a more orangey shade of red than the Italian racing colours of the time) with a white undersection split by gold that ran down to a wider section on the nose. As such a trailblazer, it can’t really be judged by modern livery standards (particularly with regards to the implementation of sponsor logos, which are essentially just slapped-on stickers), but it’s not a bad-looking car at all, and pleasingly there’s an attempt to lay out the colours along the lines of the car, a crucial factor in good livery design.

Chances for 2010? Not high – despite being such an integral part of F1 history, red and gold aren’t associated with the Lotus “brand” at all, and it’s never a wise thing (unless you’ve got the brass neck of Frank Williams in the ’90s) to stick another red car on the grid alongside Ferrari anyway: 3/10

1970 – World Wide Racing

Sandwiched in among the last couple of years of the Gold Leaf era was this intriguing effort – I’m not sure the reasoning behind it, but this predominantly gold car, while slightly foreshadowing the JPS car in combining black as well, is quite unlike any other Lotus livery. It adorned the Lotus 56B, an unsuccessful attempt at replacing the famous Lotus 72, and only competed in three Grands Prix – hence, presumably, why it’s so hard to find out the story behind its use…

Chances for 2010? I suppose that gold has as much chance as any as being an arbitrary colour choice that the team might go with if they don’t decide to call back a famous era of Lotus history – but if they do, I highly doubt it would be in any sort of tribute to this car: 2/10.

1972-1978 – John Player Special

Nope, don’t remember this one…

… well of course it’s the famous John Player Special livery. I was arguably a little unfair on this livery in only placing it at #10 in my all-time countdown – I suppose personal preference overrode its historical significance as possibly the most memorable (and fondly-remembered) livery in F1 history – not to mention the fact that I’ve never actually seen it “in action”, so perhaps I’d have placed it higher had I seen how it looks in motion rather than in still photographs. Still, what can’t be denied is that having already raced in a classic colour scheme in green and yellow, and then had the first sponsor-based livery, Lotus led the charge again by coming up with an entirely distinctive car that, moreso than arguably any other sponsor-based livery (I mean, the Marlboro McLaren is all well and good, but try arguing its uniqueness to an IndyCar fan), will be forever indelibly associated with a single team.

Chances for 2010? Well, it won’t be with JPS, obviously, due to the tobacco ban (and if that brand was ever going to return to the sport, you’d have expected it in the BAR days). But you never know – it would certainly be a way of fostering a bit of public affection for the team to paint the cars black and gold, so long as they could find a main sponsor who either already used, or didn’t mind being displayed in, the colours: 6/10.

1979-1980 – Various

With the end of the JPS deal (the first time, at least), Lotus returned to green for the first time in over a decade – but in 1979 it was a much more “modern” look and feel, with this metallic shade of green adorning the car alongside new sponsor Martini. Although Martini had earlier given us a much more classic livery on the Brabham (including the 1977 entry in my Top 25), their scheme still works surprisingly well (better than you suspect it should) alongside the chosen green. That said, it strikes me as a very American-looking car.

As does the next design, come to that, with tobacco company Essex – whose name had also adorned the side of the Martini car – taking over the whole car in 1980 for this blue design, the only time the colour has ever been used (aside from in sponsor’s lettering) on a Lotus. It’s flashy, but fairly basic for that, and I certainly don’t think it goes down as a classic.

Chances for 2010? Martini’s lines look great on an F1 car, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them adorn one again in the future – but I highly doubt it would be a Lotus, and certainly not a green one: 2/10. As for Essex, obviously that specific sponsor won’t join the team – but while I’d never usually expect a Lotus team to paint their cars a shiny blue, the fact that they’re owned by Proton means that as a predominant colour, it can’t be ruled out: the Proton logo sits on a blue background, echoing the canton of the Malaysian flag with its yellow crescent and star set on blue. So if we’re just taking the basic idea of a blue car, I’d give this: 5/10.

1981-1986 – John Player Special

In what might be one of the few examples of this ever happening in F1, having moved away from a famous livery for a brief time, Lotus returned to it in 1981 when JPS came back onboard as title sponsors. Early ’80s cars were a very different proposition aesthetically, compared to the last time the black and gold had adorned the Lotus, and it’s true that some of the designs of this era weren’t among the best. But on the other hand, it’s a classy enough livery that it still looked iconic and distinctive – and one of the most memorable F1 visuals of a generation is of the bright yellow helmet of Senna poking out of the car in the rain at Estoril, as he won his first grand prix in 1985.

1987-1990 – Camel

From one cigarette company to another, although – much as when West would later replace Marlboro on the ‘98 McLaren – the new sponsor didn’t do a bad job of replacing a classic and iconic livery with a fairly memorable design of its own. It’s plain and simple, sure – but there’s something appealing about cars that take a two-colour scheme and ensure that all their sponsors (although in this instance, they only really had to worry about changing the elf and Honda logos) stick to it. Camel would come to dominate F1 sponsorship in the late ’80s/early ’90s (sponsoring, for a time, Benetton and Williams simultaneously), but this was easily their standout effort – and for me, it’s just as memorable a “Senna car” as the JPS.

Chances of seeing it in 2010? I’m going to stick my neck out here, and say there’s almost as much chance of the 2010 Lotus being yellow as there is it being green. Why do I reckon this? I’m not sure – perhaps it’s based on personal fondness for this livery, or the fact that since Jordan departed the sport has been crying out for a yellow car again. But despite having famously often had green cars, the Lotus logo is set against a large yellow background – and I just have a feeling that its current owners, Proton, will seek to make use of it across the car in an economic climate that’s unlikely to see them enter the sport with another major brand as title sponsor. Plus of course, there’s the fact that Proton’s own colours are yellow and… blue. So: 7/10.

1991 – Team Lotus

With Camel having departed, and no clear replacement title sponsor in sight, Lotus were back in the position of having to draw upon their own company identity for a livery. And so, for the first time in over a decade, green was back – only this time, split about 50/50 across the car with simple white, separated by yellow/gold trim. It’s a lovely livery, this, I think – spoiled only slightly by some inconsistent sponsor colouring (it’s quite bizarre that a BP logo in a lighter shade of green is allowed to sit on the darker green like that), it’s simple and classic without being too flashy. Sadly, with a new title sponsor around the corner, this new visual identity would only last for a single season…

Chances for 2010? If the new team don’t want just to go with green and yellow,then white would seem the obvious colour to put into the mix – especially as a frustrating habit for F1 teams in recent years has been to paint their cars predominantly white, leading to plenty of indistinguishability. A variant of this design, or something like it, certainly wouldn’t therefore be out of the question: 7/10.

1992-1993 – Castrol

As I’ve already discussed, I’m quite fond of the 1992 Lotus, and it made it to number 15 in my all-time favourites list. Simply put, it shows how to put the classic green and yellow onto a modern car and make it work – largely by combining with a very dark grey (note that it’s not quite black) that takes care of all the “peripheral” car parts (wings etc.) in an effective and tidy manner. The large Castrol logo across the engine cover looks good, and it’s only a shame – as I said when writing up the Top 25 entry – that there’s a surfeit of sponsor logos, and that some of them are in boxes that cut into the livery’s dividing lines.

Still, it’s tidier than the ‘93 car, which added red and white into the mix and removed the yellow almost entirely. In fact, I think keeping in the yellow actually lets this car down, as it doesn’t go hugely well with the red – a shame, as I think red, white and green is an underused and potentially very good set of colours for an F1 car. This suffers again from an overload of sponsors, though – and is it Hitachi that are controlling the colour scheme now, or still Castrol?

Chances for 2010? As discussed above, a predominantly green and yellow livery is probably the most likely way for Lotus to go next year – so something like the 1992 car could be seen: 8/10. As for the ‘93 effort, though, only a major sponsor with a desire to bring red to the car would surely lead to that combination of colours, so it doesn’t seem hugely likely: 4/10.

1994 – Team Lotus

For Lotus’ last season in F1 (to date), Castrol exited stage left, and the team were again left without a major sponsor to shape the colour scheme. Hence, it was back to the previously established white and green identity – although this time it included an increased amount of yellow, and also some grey flourishes in quite a distinctive pattern draped across the car. This element of the design actually works really well, but sadly – as with so many cars of the time – the number of different (and differently-coloured) sponsor logos jostling for space on the car break up the flowing lines, and I’ve never been convinced by yellow rear wing endplates when the wing itself is darker. Nevertheless, on the whole it’s a good combination of colours.

Chances for 2010? If the team are planning to plaster the Lotus brand across the car, then we could well see something this as an alternative to simple green and/or yellow. As mentioned above, white is a colour that could set off the “classic” pair, and if they opt for something other than simple lines, it could come out looking like the ‘94 car – certainly, not exactly like it, but the overall weighting of colours and “racecar” feel of the livery could be repeated: 6/10.

So that’s the Lotus livery history – an exciting and varied one, despite the team arguably having one of the strongest corporate identites of any team courtesy of its classic green and yellow logo. Sadly, while I’m sure the new team will come up with something decent, it seems unlikely that any future car from “Lotus F1″ will enter the annals of design history in the same way that so many “Team Lotus”es did – but we can but hope.

Coming up next in Livery Histories : Jordan. And if you like your speculation, then as the 2010 season draws nearer I’ll start to have a look at what colour schemes I reckon the assorted new and existing F1 teams might stick on their cars…

So the sponsor responsible for the most ghastly F1 liveries of recent times has left the building – ING have ended their association with Renault early, in the wake of the Nelson Piquet Jr “crashgate” scandal.

ING had already stated that their deal with the team wouldn’t be renewed at the end of 2009, so we would have been expecting a new Renault livery for 2010 anyway. Should the team remain in the sport (and I’m not sure that’s a given), there’s hopefully a good chance of a classic yellow/black/white colour scheme next year. But the pertinent question now, is – what about the rest of ‘09? With the announcement having taken place so close to the Singapore GP, there’s been no time for any major change to take place – the Renault logo has simply taken ING’s place on the car – but for the remaining three races, I wonder if the team will move to make any further changes? You have to say that the prospect of seeing that car with the orange removed, but with the yellow, red and white still in place, could make for a vast improvement…

Hello, loyal readers (and those of you who keep stumbling across my Top 25 Liveries articles through Google searches). Since I’ve had a few comments asking about it recently, I thought I’d provide a quick update to let you know the site isn’t dead. Obviously there’s been no real livery news to report since the season started (that Brawn “rumour” turned out to be somewhat bunkum, didn’t it?), so that’s partly why things have been quiet – also, I’ve been busy with various other bits of work, some of which I actually get paid for, so naturally they’ve taken priority! But rest assured, the site is not going away – if nothing else, the 2010 launch season promises to be the most exciting for years – and there will be updates before next season, too. I’ve started work on the next article for the site, and it’ll be the first of my long-awaited “livery histories” series, focusing on Jordan. So keep an eye out (the RSS feed is the best way of finding out when the site kicks back into life), and it’ll hopefully show up some time in September!

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in football, you could do a lot worse than check out a new blog I’ve started with a group of people (see what I mean about being busy elsewhere?) – Tout Est Possible. Hopefully see some of you over there!

Disclaimer : I have absolutely no idea about the legitimacy of the source this came from, but since it showed up in a recent comment, I couldn’t resist publishing it in case it does turn out to be true – because if it does, then we’ve had a genuine scoop! If it doesn’t, just bear in mind that I warned you to take it with a pinch of salt. Anyway, “Brawn GP insider” stopped by to say :

Brawn GP will soon have a proper livery. All I’m saying is Monaco could be considered a high profile location to launch a major new sponsorship deal. White, red and green. I’ll say no more. Spread the word.

Make of it what you will!

Things are a bit quiet on the liveries front at the moment – those of us who’ve been hoping for a change to the Brawn livery have been sorely disappointed, although you’d hope that someone, somewhere back at the factory is working on something ready to roll out for the European races. We’ll see. Anyway, in the meantime, this was flagged up in comments to the previous post, but I thought it was worth linking to from the main page – over at Speed TV, noted livery designer Andy Blackmore has cast his eye over the various 2009 liveries in far more authoritative and technically-minded fashion than my own scribblings. Here’s part one of the article, and then part two. If you’re the sort of person who reads this site, then it’s highly recommended reading!

Reading the articles also led me to Andy’s own site, where you can read more about his work in the industry – and where he also publishes his excellent spotters guides to various sports, including a superbly-realised F1 2009 graphic. Again, well worth checking out.

More from me soon – the next published article on here (assuming there’s no new livery news in the interim) will either be a look at the 20 drivers’ helmet designs, or my look back at the history of the Jordan team’s liveries. Meanwhile, if you spot anything such as the above article that you think might be of interest to the site’s readers, either leave it in comments, or drop me a line.

Hi folks, sorry once again for the delay – I was busy around the time Toro Rosso launched, and figured it would be worth waiting for Brawn to unveil their new car in Australia before doing a post about both. Only… Brawn never did, did they? They raced with the same car as they tested with, only with a couple of Virgin logos stuck in surprisingly small and subtle places :

… and there’s not really a huge amount to say about it, is there? The fluorescent stuff is alright, and gives the team a distinct identity, but it looks like nothing other than a test car. The arrival of Virgin gave hope that there’d be some kind of rebranding exercise… but thanks to Button’s win, that car is the most famous thing in motorsport, and I honestly can’t imagine them changing it dramatically between now and the end of the season – I know they’ve only had a week since Australia, but if it was going to change, it would have been for Malaysia, and it hasn’t. If, as expected, Richard Branson ends up buying out the team and renaming it, then maybe then – but that can’t happen until the end of the season anyway. So it really does look like we’ll be stuck with a plain white car – with just a couple of sponsor decals and a bit of fluorescent yellow – heading the field this season. Nice helmet redesigns, though.

At least Toro Rosso have made some changes this year. The painted Bull remains, but it’s shifted solely to the engine cover, and there’s now a large Red Bull text logo on the sidepod. Unfortunately, coupled with the Red Bull Cola advert on the rear wing, it has the effect of making the STR look even more like the RBR than it did previously. That said, it’s arguably a slightly nicer looking car than its big brother – and the text against a darker blue background puts me in mind of a mid-90s Sauber, from before they took on the turquoise Petronas branding.

So that’s our full grid of cars. Winners for 2009? Williams, I reckon. It’s not that different to previous years, but it’s a very smart car, and I really like the curved and swooping lines as seen in the side-on view. Losers? It’s got to be Renault – the grid’s ugliest machine sits under its ugliest livery, and while it looks like far less of a patchwork than the 07/08 cars (in that all the colours on it look a bit more like they’re meant to go together) it’s still mildly vomit-inducing. And the nose is appalling.

Right, then – let’s round up those missing livery launches, starting with the car driven by my New Favourite Namesake Driver, Seb Vettel, the Red Bull :

Everything as you’d expect, here – a tweaking of the usual blue livery with the red/blue/silver corporate lines. Note the rear wing, though, being used to advertise Red Bull Cola. It’d be quite nice if one of the two teams (if not the main one, then perhaps Toro Rosso) decided to deck their whole car out in that red/white/blue colour scheme for a bit of variety, don’t you think?

Elsewhere, Force India have clawed back some respect from this website after their shocking McLaren copy-job last year, by going for something a bit more distinctive :

Alright, so there’s still too much white – but in the absence of Honda (of whom more later) and Super Aguri, that’s not quite such a bad thing. I like that they’ve gone for a scheme that’s more in keeping with their team’s name and theme, making it clearly and immediately identifiable. Although it does look rather “cheaper” than last season – you can’t help but feel it has more of the look of a sponsorless, financially-struggling back-of-the-grid outfit. Oh, incidentally, confession time – images of this livery leaked a while back thanks to FI’s official 2009 calendar, which a reader kindly emailed me, and I COMPLETELY FAILED to get round to covering it, despite it being exactly the kind of scoop the blog was set up for!

So too, in fact, were those leaked pictures of the Williams livery that were around a short while back. Once again, the Grove outfit have eschewed an official launch, but have been running on-track at Jerez in what would seem to be their definite ‘09 colour scheme. It’s pretty much as you’d expect – the usual blue and white of recent years, with the sponsors shuffled round a little :

As ever, I like it. It’s perhaps a bit simple (like almost every team, it’s low on sponsors – not inherently a bad thing, of course, but it does leave the car looking a bit un-dynamic), but I like the shade of blue (I can’t tell if they’ve changed it this year, though – on-track it looks the same, but in those promo pictures it’s rather lighter) and the shifted swooping lines are neat. Gawd knows what’ s going on with those shark-fin things, though.

And finally, although there’s not been a launch, and there are no pictures or anything to share, I’ve heard murmurings that the soon-to-be-renamed former Honda team, possibly to be known as Brawn Racing, could be running a light-blue and white livery this year. Which would make for a nice bit of variety, I’m sure you’ll agree. Hopefully we’ll find out if/when they show up for testing, but if it does turn out to be correct, remember that you heard it here first. Unless you didn’t.

Just dropping in again to say hello, and yes, I’ll be doing another quick roundup of the remaining ‘09 cars shortly. However, I also just wanted to pick up on a suggestion left by “Aly” in the comments to the most recent post :

Also what about a fantasy livery section? See if us fans can do a better job than the heroes who’s jobs we would all love?

I think this is a splendid idea, not least because it means I can pass off other people’s work as original content! So, here’s the thing – if you’ve got any fantasy F1 liveries you’ve created and you’d like to show ‘em off, then send them in to me at seb.patrick@gmail.com. They can be rendered artwork, modifications to existing pictures, lineart, skins you’ve made for various racing games… anything, really (but please, if you’ve modified someone else’s creation, please give the necessary credit where possible. I won’t publish anything unless I’ve got at least one author’s name to put on it). I’ll post what I get here (with commentary if I’m feeling particularly cruel), unless I get too many, in which case I’ll be selective. But yeah, show me what you’ve got, and I’ll let you all chew on ‘em among yourselves – and I might even throw in one or two of my own, as well…

Okay, it’s about time I got around to this, so that we’ll be nice and up-to-date for when the next round of launches kicks off (Red Bull are scheduled to launch on the 9th, with Force India and Toro Rosso to be confirmed and the Williams livery to be unveiled at the opening race). It’s looking increasingly like, aside from the Renault, no team has actually bothered to make significant changes to their design this year – but let’s go through team by team and see if there are any differences we can spot, or points worth noting.

We start with Ferrari, first out of the blocks (as they were last year) and, of course, sticking with almost exactly the same livery (as they did last year). Ferrari only ever change things when they’ve got a new major sponsor – or if it’s an end-of-era type situation, as they did when making the design a bit more “futuristic” for the post-Schumacher era.

They’ve gone with the same wider version of the “barcode” Marlboro fudging as was seen on the car for some of last season – it’s nowhere near as nice as the simpler version from 2007 and last year’s launch, to be honest. The sooner this weird, rule-bending half-association with Marlboro is over, and they have to actually put some thought into the liveries again, the better – sure, the cars always look nice, but they’re desperately unimaginative.

Speaking of desperately unimaginative… hey, it’s Toyota!

I don’t think there’s ever been a team with such a bloody-minded determination NEVER TO CHANGE. Alright, so as we discussed at the time of the ‘08 launch, they make minor changes each year, but essentially, it’s been THE SAME BASTARD CAR since 2002. And it’s BORING. Even moreso when you consider that, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, we have too many predominantly white cars nowadays. For the record, this has been changed from last year (you wouldn’t know at a glance, but compare side by side and you get an idea), in that the red bits are back to being asymmetrical. But all that does is make it look like an older version, rather than something new. Sigh.

McLaren, meanwhile, haven’t got bored of the chrome look yet, and so are yet another team that are running a car almost identical to the last couple of years.

There are a couple of points worth noting on this one, though. If we compare it to last year, it can be seen that the red/black lines that run alongside the nose no longer stretch past the cockpit. This is probably, along with the way the red on the sidepod seems to run for further, a consequence of the new shape of the car. Meanwhile, it could just be a trick of the light, but the red looks a bit brighter, and a bit less orange. To be honest, though, these things are difficult to judge at launch, and there would seem to be no practical reason to simply change the shade, so I doubt it’s really any different. And the other point to note is that, clearly proud of Lewis’ World Champion status, they’ve stuck his race number #1 on the rear wing’s endplate. It’s particularly interesting when you consider that they didn’t bother to do the same with Alonso’s 2007 car – clearly, the team feel differently about champions that actually won in their own machinery…

And finally, we have BMW. Once again, not a huge amount to say, with a basic paint scheme that only alters to fit the simpler lines of these ugly new machines :

… but there are at least changes to note, and they’re quite obvious. The end of the sponsorship deal with Credit Suisse has left a gap on the car, with Intel moving to the rear wing endplate space (have they scaled back their involvement, too? They’re not on the front wing any more, either) It remains to be seen if the gap on the engine cover is going to be filled by a new sponsor before the season starts, but it’s interesting that BMW have chosen to put the old “BMW Power” text on the lower part – it’s somewhat reminiscent of their branding on the old Williamses. Oh, and Nick Heidfeld has a new, green helmet design – but I’ll be looking at all helmet designs once the season gets underway!

It’s a shame, really. I launched this blog to commentate on liveries, and over the last couple of seasons there’s been very little to talk about in the way of new designs (even less now that the number of teams in the sport is shrinking). Still, I’m hoping to keep things going (and I do mean it, this time!) with some more “history”-based articles, so hopefully that’ll see us through a barren year of paint-job-related excitement!

… Actually, let’s do the Renault first, since it’s the only one of the new launches really worth talking about with any urgency.

(pics from gpupdate.net)

Well, I suppose the best you can say is that at least they’ve bothered to change the livery.

Actually, let’s be fair. The main problem with the 07-08 Renault livery – although, I’ll admit, it did eventually grow on me a bit by simple virtue of hanging around for so long – was that it was a combination of colours that didn’t make sense. Yellow, orange and white – fine. But throwing in the dark blue just made it all off-kilter. They should have either dropped the orange or the yellow. Well, for 2009… they’ve dropped the dark blue, and replaced it with red, courtesy of new sponsor Total (who you may recall as a long-time Jordan sponsor in the mid- to late-90s).

Now, on paper, the combination of red, orange, yellow and white doesn’t sound too bad. I still don’t agree with an F1 car having four “main” colours (three should be the maximum), but at least they could be said to complement one-another. No, the problem here is in the application of the colours. Over the monocoque, it’s not bad at all – taking away the blue means it still wants for a defining colour, but there’s no clash and everything blends quite nicely. The two main problems I have, though, are in the use of the red, and with the engine cover.

The red, first, is clearly a mistake. Yes, the endplates immediately mark out the car as looking different to last year – and in a climate where we’ve only got nine definite teams, and at least half of those are expected to run near-identical designs, that’s something for a livery buff to cling onto. The problem is that they’re the only use of red on the car, and so they stand out absolutely horribly. Even moreso than the blue parts on the old car, they simply look like Renault have run out of wingplates and nicked them from another garage (a Jordan garage circa 1997, perhaps). They also ruin the effect of the new, yellow rear wing – something which would otherwise be quite nice and traditional in a “classic Renault” kind of way.

The  engine cover, meanwhile, is a bit of a mess. Orange and yellow stripes? Really? What are they there for? They seem completely at odds with the theme in the car’s front half of using the orange to separate the yellow from the white – here, orange is just liberally strewn wherever. The reddish nature of the orange means that from a distance, it looks like the team are being nice and patriotic for Fernando, but I can’t imagine that Nelsinho is hugely happy with that…

And then, finally, there’s the nose. Now this is bizarre. Quite aside from the ugly shape of it (and I don’t know what’s going on with these new regs, but all the teams seem to have taken them as a cue to make their nose cones hideously ugly in completely different ways), the weird thing is the way there’s a quite good, simple white-to-orange-to-yellow pattern running down the top half… and then suddenly on the nose itself, for no apparent reason, you’ve got a sudden cut to white, as if they suddenly ran out of paint, or something. Honestly, I bet you we see that altered and flashed with orange before the first couple of races are out. It’s just sloppy-looking.

Overall, while I was pleasantly surprised to see the Renault livery change in quite significant ways – particularly as it no longer looks like the Mild Seven car with the blue bits tipp-exed out – it’s clear that they’ve still got no idea what they’re doing. The new regulations means that F1 cars are all going to be naturally ugly this year – and it’s the job of the livery designers to counteract that with simple, effective designs. The time for swooping, dramatic layouts that follow the lines of the car is gone – because there are no nice lines on the cars any more. It’s why the Ferrari will probably turn out to be the only half-decent one – one colour, trimmed with another. Not FOUR, all vying for attention.

Come on, Renault. Ditch ING. Back to yellow, black and white. You know it makes sense.