1. Keep yourself occupied with the DVD of last season’s highlights
2. Watch A1 GP (not an option for me because I don’t have Sky)
3. Feverishly keep track of latest winter testing and car launch news

So, keeping track of car launches it is then! On Friday Toyota launched their new car. Today it was Ferrari’s turn (does anybody else find it odd that they’ve done this on a Sunday?). And oh my goodness. Ferrari’s new car is so ugly! Ferrari have banned photographers from being close to the car yet — presumably because they are so embarrassed by the car’s ugliness.

Tobacco advertising is, of course, now banned. While most tobacco companies have bowed gracefully out of the sport, Philip Morris and Ferrari haven’t. In fact, if anything, they have upped the ante. The ‘Marlboro’ brand may not appear on the car, but an ugly “barcode”-style logo (which apparently does remind people of Marlboro!) will take prominence. You can see this in the photograph above on the rear wing, the front wing and on the nose towards the cockpit.

Furthermore, the shade of red is said to have moved even further away from Ferrari’s traditional rosso corsa colour towards something more like the washed-out bright red of Marlboro.

Add to this the rumours that Marlboro are considering putting an illustration of the Ferrari car on their cigarette packets, does it seem as though Philip Morris are keeping to the tobacco ban? Maybe they are keeping to the letter, but undoubtedly not to the spirit.

Ferrari aren’t the only team with tweaks to their livery rumoured for this year. The tobacco ban has meant that Renault lost its title sponsor, Mild Seven. Many were hoping that this would lead to the team reverting to its traditional yellow, which has been a secondary colour in recent years. But recent ‘spy’ photos unfortunately suggest that they will run with a dark blue next year.

Honda are also said to be considering a livery change in the wake of the loss of their sponsor, British American Tobacco. They to promote their supposed green credentials. I think this would be a massive mistake. The happy coincidence was that the Lucky Strike livery was almost identical to Honda’s traditional colours! But now that Lucky Strike have gone, Honda have decided to move to different, non-traditional colours.

As I said in a comment at BlogF1, do you remember the amazing ‘Impossible Dream’ advert for Honda? Can you imagine if the Formula 1 car in that was green? It would have ruined the entire advert.

Some teams are sensible enough to call it a day with tobacco advertising. This has been coming for years now. Tobacco advertising has been banned in some countries for decades, and I think logos were only seen on Formula 1 cars for about half of the races anyway.

It is a bit of a myth that Formula 1 relies on tobacco advertising. Even some of the team bosses seem to believe that they need their tobacco logos to carry on in Formula 1. But it is not the case. Prudent teams have turned elsewhere — banks, computer companies, and so on — and have found equally lucrative sponsorship deals. Williams is particularly notable. Williams ditched tobacco advertising themselves in 1999, and for a period you could have called them anti-smoking, as they even carried NiQuitin CQ logos.

British American Tobacco has seen this coming aswell. BAT want out. That partly explains why BAR is now 45% owned by Honda. Earlier this year there were even suggestions that Honda would fully own the team by this date.

McLaren, meanwhile, have gracefully accepted the legislation. West logos were dropped a day before they even had to be, and yesterday was the last time we’ll see a McLaren with tobacco advertising on it.

Ironically, having just parted company with its tobacco sponsor, McLaren will replace the space vacated by West with Johnnie Walker logos. Minardi have run logos for online gambling companies. So getting rid of tobacco companies isn’t going to cut dangerous addiction!

The two teams who will be sticking their neck out tomorrow will be Renault and Ferrari. The last I heard about Ferrari’s sponsorship situation, Philip Morris were not put off by this legislation. Even if Marlboro logos can’t be displayed on the car, Philip Morris would still pay top-dollar for the Ferrari cars to be painted Marlboro red. The Scuderia, as usual, must be absolutely pissing themselves with laughter over this. Being paid millions to run in the colour that they have (almost) always run in! Incredible!

Ferrari themselves might be able to get away with it, as they are based in Italy. The stricter British laws affect all of the other teams apart from Toyota and Sauber (who don’t have tobacco advertising anyway).

The problem seems to be over the ambiguity of the law. Nobody quite seems to know what it means, and the government doesn’t seem to want to clarify (remember, Tony Blair’s first scandal as Prime Minister was over Formula 1, so he has avoided it ever since). The law appears to ban any British-based company from being involved in tobacco sponsorship. But what does this mean?

It had been suggested that ITV would be breaking the law if they broadcast Formula 1. A newspaper or a website would be breaking the law if it publishes a picture of a Ferrari. Infact, FOM, because it is based in Britain, would be breaking the law. Apparently Bernie Ecclestone could go to jail for two years. I can’t quite see that happening though. Taking it to its logical conclusion, it will be illegal for anybody to publish archive photographs of Formula 1 cars with tobacco logos on them. ITV will be broadcasting tomorrow’s race. I doubt that any action will be taken.

ASH are apoplectic. Not only are they angry at Formula 1, the sport which is undoubtedly seen as the worst culprit for tobacco advertising, but they are angry that the states have been unable to clarify the law and tell the Formula 1 teams and broadcasters what’s what — despite the fact that this legislation has been on the cards for possibly decades, and certainly the law itself has been in place for three years.

My personal view is that I have been watching Formula 1 for most of my life, and I have never been tempted to start smoking. I personally doubt the effectiveness (and danger) of tobacco advertising. Nevertheless, there are clearly a lot of people who want to get rid of tobacco advertising once and for all. It’s been coming for as long as I can remember. Perhaps Formula 1 should just accept defeat and move on.