Red Bull RB8

Adrian Newey calls this the Great Grandson of the RB5, realising perhaps that things were better in the old days during the war. The problem with evolving a car so tightly packaged is that there’s not much more sculpting that can happen, unless they go radical and chuck away the gearbox altogether.

Newey himself has been a bit downbeat:

“It’s a difficult task, we have lost the exhaust technology with the restriction exhaust outlet position that we were able to develop and perhaps be ahead of the pack on in the last couple of years, that led to a big re think over the winter. Whether that will affect us more than other people is difficult to know of course. We designed the RB7, last year’s car, around that exhaust position and were probably the only people to do so, so it may be that we’ve lost more than other people through that. Only time will tell, it will be good to get out to do some testing and to see where we get to”

…which probably means they’ll only win 80% of all the races this year.

Nose: They have gone for a stepped nose so drastically broken that it’s got a massive hole in it:

Is this an aerodynamic nostril, or a letterbox to post away 2012′s chances?

Either way, its hard to imagine them not being dominant, but not hard to hope.

McLaren MP4/27

McLaren haven’t won the constructers since Sebastian Vettel has been born, probably. Either way it’s been a while and with Lewis Hamilton heading into his sixth season (six, oo doesn’t time fly) with only one world championship to his name (makes all that sycophantic ITV1 coverage seem a bit much in hindsight doesn’t it.) and Button entering his 300th year it feels high time to overcome Red Bull.

After a disastrous start to the last couple of years they always end up being as quick-ish as Red Bull, so if they can start well this year they have a chance.

Nose: The new car is pretty, in that way that cars can be pretty, but mainly because its nose hasn’t been trodden on. At the time of writing the McLaren lot are the only team to not have the stepped nose.Is this brave and clever and wonderful, or are thy going to look mighty skanky sniffing the arse of a HRT? Only time will tell

Ferrari F151? Oh, F2012 – Where is the numbering consistency?!

With Massa being only marginally more useful that ballast last year the Italian Red team and everyone there trying to not make eye contact with Alonso and reinforcing all the doors this is a team who, like McLaren, need a great season to silence the naysayers. Heavily penalised by not being as clever with their engine maps and all that last year the one win and Silverstone showed that last years car could have been up there, will this year be great on a leveller playing field? They’ve said they’re being more aggressive this year, but then they have kept Massa…

Nose: Even Ferrari themselves have admitted the nose is “not pretty”. It’s one of the flattest squarest things yet seen that looks as though it got caught in a vice on the way to the photoshoot, a quick car is a pretty car. They had better hope this is so quick that no one can focus on it.

Renault, er Lotus, E20

The 20th car to come from Enstone, a team that has been Toleman, Benetton, Renault, Cheaters, Renault-Lotus, and now just Lotus. Why am I finding this year them being Lotus more confusing when there were two Lotus’s (Loti?).

After a promising start last year that soon disappeared with Kubica whacking his rally car and then with ever diminishing results they have hired Kimi Raikkonen to return to F1 this year. Now the Lotus/Lotus debacle is over and the factory throughly bleached to get rid of any remnants of Flavio Briatore they can only hope that it’ll be another new beginning, like Ferrari and McLaren. It’s getting crowded behind Red Bull.

Nose: Not the worst, in fact probably the nicest stepped nose thing launched. But then black is very slimming.

Force India

Whilst Sutil was glassing everyone Paul Di Resta became the Rookie of last year, impressing car aficionados with his driving skills and team management for sounding like a talking press release whenever he opens his mouth. They’ve got the ever impressive Nico Hulkenberg alongside him this year and the car looks tidy. The only downside is Vijay Mallya’s crumbling empire and the obvious scrimping of the new Sahara sponsor who seems unable to design a logo in anything other than wordart. And yes, Orange and Green might be the colours of the Indian flag, but it still looks like a massive tictac box.

Nose: Not terrible, quite rounded, doesn’t look as stamped on as some others. 

Sauber

There’s something depressingly bleak about Sauber launching their new car on a bit of track that looks like a motorway layby. But the still quite bereft of sponsors 2012 car is not a nice looking affair, with Koboyashi getting more subdued and the other one, what’s his name, being just as forgettable, can they do anything to go up in the rankings?

Nose: Urgh, looks like they’ve painted it black so it can’t be seen. Good plan.

Torro Rosso

Not affiliated anymore with Red Bull, aside from being Italian for Red Bull and having Red Bull written across the side. But Newey has not even licked any part of this car (whereas the RB8…) and, dare I say, it looks nice. It won’t be anywhere but the middle, but after scrapping two promising new drivers they’ve hired two promising new identikit drivers for 2012, watch to see them in danger of their seats from race three.

Nose: Maybe it’s the colours, but this nose doesn’t look half bad,  maybe even better that the Red Bull? 

Williams

Oh what’s the fucking point? Every year we crow on about how this’ll be the year and that the Williams looks good and etc etc. Not falling for that this year. Here’s a picture of a good Williams.

But they have launched a car, renault are back on board and they’re trying with another Senna. The hearts of a nation hope they can do well…

Nose:  Very flat, like really flat, how do they get their feet in there?

Caterham

The first team to launch this year in a full page spread with various household implements used to cleverly obscure the nose.

Nose: This whole car just looks weird. Like weirder than the others, the whole car looks square, not as in not cool, but as in Mike Gascoyne lost his protractor.

Still to launch:

Mercedes: Running the first test with last years car, surely another year without results will have Mercedes asking some questions.
Maurrissa: No longer virgins, tee hee, the brave new CFD only design failed abysmally. This year will have some chisels and beard stroking on top of the geekery.
HRT: Will they even launch? For the third year running they look unlikely to have a car ready for the season, and they’ve hired Pedro De La Rosa, so clearly having a laugh.

But, W.W.N.D, the acronym tattoed on every F1 designers wrist, What Will Newey Do?

Stepped nose, or graceful sweep? It’ll launch on 6th Feb, but what do you think he’ll do?

Caterham, Ferrari and Force India have a stepped nose as a result of a boring rule change this year that means that one bit of the car’s maximum height is higher than another bit. Geeky chaps have been wetting themselves over how to deal with it. The obvious way seems to be to draw a diagonal line between the highest and lowest allowed point and make a graceful change between the two. (as explained properly by the wonderful scarbs on his site)

But F1 designers, having no sense of humour have so far wanted it as high as possible and as low as possible all at once and so have used the literal allowable line, regardless of aesthetics.

Who gave the designers this ugly idea though? Well, we can reveal that whilst the F1 world has been wanking off about Ayrton Senna, a lot of the designers had the same eureka moment when looking at his rival.

Yes, the face of F1 2012, the nose that will feature on most the cars belongs to…

David Croft has jumped ship from BBC Radio 5live and has taken up the Martin Brundle role of lead commentator.

Martin Brundle himself will be the eyecandy of the new coverage and in the commentary box will be being David Coulthard next year.

Ant Davidson will be commentating on the bits that the big boys can’t be arsed.

Ted Kravitz will be Ted Kravitz.

Natalie Pinkham will carry on being Tony Jardine

Steve Rider will be Jake Humphrey AND Eddie Jordan.

No one has been confirmed as Eddie Jordan’s Shirts… yet.

In terms of coverage it does actually sound all quite good, with full showings of all sessions, more in depth analysis, getting to see things like the drivers parades and those other bits we always moan about not seeing as well as lots of promises of new innovations and technical wizardry.

So who is left at the BBC? When he’s not off doing the Olympics or whatever else needs a furrowed brow we presume that Jake Humphrey will carry on with his diminishing group of ‘friends’ watching and, what with their names not being mentioned today DC and EJ are probably staying put.

But will DC commentate on his own? Not likely. Unbelievably it’s already being rumoured that Jonathan Legard or James Allen might be back in the shitseat which leads us to conclude that Sky have paid for their BBC coverage to make the Sky £10 a month F1 channel more appealing to us.

Today I took part in an awkward Press conference over the phone with Brundle, Croft and Kravitz alongside a host of other F1 podcasts and websites. I had one serious question and one silly question lined up, but due to the weird vagaries of a conference call I only spoke up to ask

“With Eddie Jordan not being announced, can you confirm there’ll be no bad poetry at the start of the shows next year?”

I don’t think they found it funny…

Kevin and Terry manage to be rude to an entire country, the holocaust, the memory of Sir Jimmy Saville, Massa’s face, culling dead weight drivers, Sky Subscribers and barely get round to mentioning another dull Abu Dhabi GP.

Another impromptu break and the boys are back to discuss a two times world champion, a desperate rubens, a sad lewis, Rowan Atkinson’s funny face, Massa’s language and The Ever Present Issue of Sexy Drivers

And it doesn’t auger well for Jordan-Spyker-Midland-Sahara-Force-India team to be investing much in the coming seasons as it was clearly just done in Word…

…they’ve not even picked a nice font or anything.

So, we would guess that Sutil will stay for another 32 years.

The first night podcast takes place in Kevin & Terry’s busy schedules as they reluctantly realise that this year is a bit, well, boring…

Vettel’s in the lead, Massa’s got a nark on, Kimi might be back and they are sleepy

Kevin and Terry fleetingly remember the races they’ve missed and soon get back into the swing of calling people cunts as they recap the German, Hungarian, Belgian and Italian Grands Prix, as well as the Sky falling in on F1.