In the past couple of weeks the Super License row has blown up again. After this year’s bill landed on the drivers’ doormat, there were more rumblings of a possible drivers’ strike. This was said to be a prospect at the 2008 British Grand Prix, but in the end nothing came of it and the drivers coughed up.

This year’s increase is a relatively modest increase to take account of inflation. But it seems that the drivers were expecting the Super License fees to go back down having made their views very clear about it last year. No such luck. The GPDA issued a press release, the first time they have done such a thing according to Brad Spurgeon.

Grandprix.com called the press release an unwise move. Certainly, the decision to release it on Friday evening — when the rest of the world is off to the pub for the next 60 hours — displays an incredible lack of media savvy, even for a club of simple racing drivers.

But I can’t agree with the overall sentiment of the article. It may be difficult to feel much sympathy for some of the most highly-paid sports stars in the world. But questions need to be asked about quite what the FIA is playing at.

The 2008 increase took the basic fee up from €1,690 to €10,000. On top of that, the extra fee for each driver increased from €447 per point to €2,000 per point. Such an increase will come as a shock no matter how rich you are.

All in all, this allowed the FIA to increase their takings through the Super License by 454%. This increase has still neither been explained nor justified by the FIA, except something vague to do with safety (as though all the safety measures only came in during 2008). Safety is a nice get-out for the FIA. As often argued by Grace on the Formula 1 Blog.com podcast, the FIA know that no-one will be able to argue against “safety”, so they use that to explain anything without having to actually justify it.

The GPDA’s statement notes that this year the World Drivers’ Champion (i.e. Lewis Hamilton) will have to pay $270,000 simply for the right to compete. (It is worth noting that Lewis Hamilton is not a member of the GPDA, so this issue is not simply about Lewis Hamilton.) Outside of F1, the highest license fee is $4,000 which a Nascar driver has to pay. That is minuscule compared with the FIA’s Super License fee.

Formula 1 drivers may be rich. But they earn their money. That is because they are among the very most supremely talented individuals in the world — which is a lot more than can be said for certain presidents of certain governing bodies. It looks suspiciously like the FIA has calculated that F1 drivers will receive little sympathy over this issue, and so have decided to exploit them to extract as much money as possible.

As has been noted by others many times, for the past few years the FIA has appeared to be on a complete money grab. It is not just the drivers that have faced a fee hike in recent years.

The FIA proposed to increase a team’s entry fee to the 2009 Formula 1 World Championship from €300,000 to €740,000. Again, safety was used as the excuse. Alianora La Canta noted.

Then there is the ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS fine handed out to McLaren in 2007. The FIA have still not revealed what on earth they have spent that money on.

Despite these handy new sources of income, the FIA has somehow contrived to increase its budget shortfall for 2009. Keith Collantine looked into this and you have to wonder just what is going on at the FIA.

The shortfall of €1.7 million in 2008 was bad enough. Somehow this has almost doubled to €3 million for 2009. The FIA’s sheer incompetence never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it is because Max Mosley thinks nothing of disposing of upwards of £1 million for his own personal gain when it would have been much easier, cost-effective and dignified to just do the honourable thing and step down.

Max Mosley may have scoffed at the notion of Fred Goodwin replacing him as FIA President. But it seems to me that the FIA could do with the help of someone who has a bit of experience in managing money. (Then again, maybe I only say that because I am Scottish and I have no understanding of how F1 or the FIA work. Though I don’t think I am unusually stupid.)

So even though the drivers’ plight may engender little sympathy among the general public as a whole, they are still right to make a stand. Someone needs to ask some serious questions about why the FIA is taking in ever more money, yet ending up with ever higher shortfalls. It’s time that Max Mosley and the FIA were held to account for this, because to me it just stinks to high heaven of something fishy.

The Brazilian Grand Prix heralded the end of David Coulthard’s career. Unfortunately, the race ended in a turn 1 smash. It deprived David Coulthard of a dignified send-off to his career, as well as depriving us of the awesome helmet cam, used by FOM for the first time since 1994.

In most ways it sums up David Coulthard’s 2008 season, which has seen him become a magnet for crashes. It was a most unfortunate season for the Scot with only one or two highlights — most notably 3rd place in the Canadian Grand Prix. Overall, though, the impression left is that DC may have been better off retiring one year earlier.

It is going too far to say that the first corner crash sums up DC’s career. Even though he could never count himself among F1’s very most talented, the statistics of his career make for pleasant reading. With 246 grand prix starts under his belt, he is the fourth most experienced Formula 1 driver of all time.

He is arguably the most successful British driver of all time. His tally of 13 race wins is relatively modest compared to other British drivers, particularly Nigel Mansell, Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark. But he has scored more points than any other British driver — 535. By this measure, he is the 5th most successful driver of all time.

For the majority of his career, David Coulthard has been lucky enough to have the best machinery. His race début came in the saddest of circumstances, as he was chosen to replace Ayrton Senna when the Brazilian died in 1994. But he raced for a Williams team that was just entering a phase of true dominance.

When he moved to McLaren just a few years later, it was in time for the Woking squad to make its own major resurgence. Ace designer Adrian Newey had moved across to McLaren from Williams at roughly the same time.

But at both Williams and McLaren, his team mate usually made much more of the opportunities the best car provided them. Damon Hill was a major contender for the 1995 World Championship. Meanwhile, Mika Häkkinen strung together two World Championships in a row in 1998 and 1999.

It is too easy to say that Häkkinen got favourable treatment at McLaren. DC may have moved over for the Finn in two successive races, in Jerez 1997 and Melbourne 1998. Critics point out that nice guys never win, and that DC’s apparent happiness to let his team mate past was evidence that DC did not have what it really takes. But the fact is that Coulthard struggled to get to grips with his McLaren car from 1998 onwards. That may have been due to the introduction of grooved tyres or whatever.

DC was to be further thwarted by another rule change a few years later. The Scot never could get to grips with one-lap qualifying. When the pressure was on him to deliver at the first time of asking, he more often than not found himself unable to deliver. Things did not improve much when the knock-out format was introduced.

Despite the patchy record, though, DC has had some great highlights during his career. When Häkkinen lost his motivation, DC was in prime position to challenge Schumacher for the title in 2001. He did, admittedly, finish up a long way behind Schumacher, having scored just 65 points. But he was definitely best of the rest that season, and the only person who could seriously claim to have given Schumacher any bother that season.

And a tally of 13 wins, no matter how good his machinery was, is fairly impressive stuff. David Coulthard was no fool.

Just when it looked as though DC’s career was coming to a halt, he moved from McLaren to Red Bull. It breathed new life into his career. He was reinvented as Formula 1’s elder statesman, a role he adapted well to. In his first season at the midfield Red Bull team in 2005, he scored as many points as he had at McLaren in 2004.

Since then he has been reunited with the chassis designer that has accompanied him throughout his career, Adrian Newey. He scooped up a clutch of great results, including two podiums along the way.

Overall, throughout his many many seasons, David Coulthard has driven for just three teams in his entire career. That demonstrates just how valuable every team felt he was to the package.

All the while, David Coulthard was great entertainment off the circuit as well as on it. Even though some nicknamed him ‘David Cardboard’ at first, he quickly developed a strong personality and was unafraid to use colourful language in his interviews.

Now his career has fizzled out. And even though DC never achieved the status of true greatness, and the World Championship eluded him, I think he has a lot to be proud of.

Thankfully, this colourful character promises not to go away for good. He will remain at Red Bull in an advisory role, proving yet again that teams invariably appreciate his input. Furthermore, it looks almost certain that DC will form part of the BBC’s team covering F1 from 2009 onwards. At least it looks like he will be entertaining us for years to come.

And here is one of the most entertaining moments in F1, provided by David Coulthard himself:

About a month ago Craig at Craigblog wrote a post about F1 merchandise. It was quite a coincidence because at the same time I was on the verge of buying the first piece of F1 merchandise I had bought for a very long time.

Since the turn of the decade I have watched Formula 1 pretty much as a neutral. Of course, I prefer some teams and drivers more than others. In case you’re wondering, my favoured teams are BMW, Red Bull, Renault and (at a stretch) McLaren. Out of the drivers, I like Räikkönen, Heidfeld, Kubica, Alonso, Coulthard, Webber, Barrichello and (at a stretch) Kovalainen.

When I was younger my attention was grabbed by Stewart Grand Prix. Jackie Stewart’s was a famous name that I could latch onto, and the Scottish iconography appealed to me as a young Scot. I also loved the fact that they were a new team, seemingly with the odds against them, but did a fairly solid job.

Rubens Barrichello’s drive to 2nd in Monaco in 1997 was exciting to watch, and for a second I thought they were going to win when Michael Schumacher briefly ran off the road at Ste Devote. Mostly though 1997 was a year fraught with reliability problems. 1998 brought a further dip in form.

But the 1999 season as a whole was brilliant for Stewart GP as Barrichello once again shone. Who could forget Barrichello leading at the Brazilian Grand Prix? And then Johnny Herbert took a fantastic win at the Nürburgring. This team was only three years old, yet was in a position to fight for good points hauls, finish 4th in the championship and even win a race. That’s more than the team’s subsequent owners, Ford (as Jaguar) and Red Bull can say for themselves.

Besides Stewart, I developed a soft spot for Jordan. I loved the way they came back from a disastrous start to 1998. Halfway through the season they hadn’t even scored a single point. Then things started to look up during the British Grand Prix. I can remember watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Jordan’s 1998 season. Eddie Jordan was nervously pacing around the Jordan pit area mumbling, “I need this feckin’ point… Come on, I need this feckin’ point so much.” He got that feckin’ point.

Just a few races later Jordan Grand Prix scored a magnificent 1–2 in Belgium, with Damon Hill heading Ralf Schumacher. It was the team’s first win and it ushered in a new, though fleeting, era of competitiveness for the team.

The 1999 season was a joy to watch, not only for Stewart but for Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen in particular. The German driver took an amazing six podiums including two wins, particularly memorably in France. For a long while it looked as though Frentzen was a genuine championship contender, though in the end it was not to be.

In retrospect, the work the Jordan team put into the 1999 season diverted their attention away from the future. Ian Phillips said as much in the latest Inside Line podcast — the championship run burnt the team out, and they never recovered.

In subsequent years the Jordan team drifted ever further into mediocrity and it became more and more difficult for me to like the team. 2003 was particularly painful. Giancarlo Fisichella took a flukey win in Brazil, but that disguised a truly awful season in which the team otherwise scored the miserable total of three points. If the previous year’s scoring system would have been in use, the win would have been their one and only points score.

To compound matters, in 2003 Eddie Jordan got into a needless legal fight with Vodafone which he was seemingly never going to win. From then on Jordan struggled financially. That team is now known as Force India and has had four different owners in the past five years.

However, the late 1990s were great Jordan-supporting days. And along with supporting the team comes the merchandise. I had two Jordan caps (one generic Jordan and the other Damon Hill, mimicking the Hills’ famous helmet design). I also had a Damon Hill t-shirt that commemorated the “place in history” that Hill took by taking the first win for the Jordan Grand Prix team. I also have a 1:43 diecast model of Damon Hill’s Jordan 198, the car he drove in 1998 and helped secure Jordan’s famous 1–2 in Belgium.

That is not the only F1 merchandise I bought when I was younger. I also had an Orange Arrows cap. I think I got it because I liked the colours. I am sometimes surprised to see people still wearing Orange Arrows gear from time to time, around six years after the team folded. I also had a rather colourful Ferrari t-shirt commemorating their 1999 Constructors Championship victory. What can I say? The folly of youth.

In addition to the Damon Hill 1:43 diecast, for a period of five years I decided I was going to collect 1:43 scale models of every single Formula 1 world champion. So in 1998 and 1999 I bought two Mika Häkkinen McLarens and from 2000–2002 I bought three Michael Schumacher Ferraris.

To spice things up a bit I bought models of Alberto Ascari’s 1952 Ferrari 500 F2 and Nelson Piquet’s 1981 Brabham BT-49C. But I got bored after that.

Grand Prix Legends were looking for excuses as to why diecast models don’t sell so well nowadays. I think the reality is that 75 quid for a 1:18 model that will only gather dust on a shelf is a bloody rip-off. Back in the day I think I spent around £20 per 1:43 model. I don’t think that’s something I would do today.

Aside from the normal annual purchases of video games (when available) and the season review DVD, I have not bought any Formula 1 merchandise for a while.

Until now.

I have bought this jazzy BMW Sauber t-shirt to express my support for the team. Like many, I have been wooed by the methodical, grounded approach of the team’s principal Mario Theissen and its drivers Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

The win was coming for a while, and the fact that it was a 1–2, just like Jordan’s maiden win, was the icing on the cake. The team’s recent dip in form won’t deter me. Now, for the first time for several years, I am not a neutral. I am supporting BMW Sauber.

It’s strange because I was never a supporter of the Sauber team at all. Nor was I keen on BMW when they were in partnership with Williams. But the magical combination of BMW and Sauber under the leadership of Mario Theissen has attracted me to them to the extent that I am a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing fan.

So which teams do you support, and do you buy merchandise to show that support?

Yesterday David Coulthard announced that he will retire from Formula 1 at the end of this season.

Craig has expressed his disappointment. And as a Scot, I feel a bit of sadness that a nation which has produced two of the greatest grand prix drivers of all time — Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark — will almost certainly not be represented in F1 next year.

Coulthard is one of just two drivers whose début I did not see (the other being Rubens Barrichello). So not only does his departure signal the end of an era for Scottish motorsport, it also signals the fact that F1’s last remaining links to the mid-1990s will soon be gone. That will be further underlined when Barrichello retires, as I expect he will do at the end of this season as well.

Despite the sadness though, I feel that it is now the right time for David Coulthard to retire. He has rarely looked like a potential World Champion, but looking back through the records it is clear that DC has had some amazing high points to his career. He was a runner-up in the World Drivers Championship in 2001 and came third in the championship four times. He has a final tally of 13 race wins to his name. Not bad going at all!

On the other hand, for much of his career he was in race-winning cars and I always got the feeling that Coulthard failed to realise the full potential of these opportunities. In the 1995 season his Williams was a front-running car. His team mate, Damon Hill — by no means the greatest of racing drivers — won four races while Coulthard could manage only one.

His career at McLaren began well. Middling results in 1996 could be blamed on the mediocrity of his car, but the 1997 season began with a win in Australia. This was later followed up by a second in Italy.

But when McLaren became proper championship contenders in 1998, Coulthard went off the boil. The season began with a disastrous Australian Grand Prix in which he let team mate Mika Häkkinen pass on the basis of a gentleman’s agreement. Not only was it a PR disaster, but it was symbolic of the way the two drivers’ seasons would pan out.

His Finnish team mate was entering the high point of his career. Häkkinen comprehensively outclassed Coulthard, taking eight race wins to Coulthard’s one, and 100 points to Coulthard’s 56.

1999 was not much better for Coulthard. Although the McLaren was no longer as dominant, Mika Häkkinen nonetheless took an amazing 11 pole positions during the season while Coulthard — never the strongest of qualifiers — took none. Coulthard finished that season in a distant fourth place, even behind the Jordan of Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

It was not until 2001 that Coulthard was able to assert his authority over Häkkinen. But by that time the Finn was losing motivation and retired at the end of the season. Coulthard finished a highly creditable 2nd in the championship, but took just two race wins and scored barely more than half of the points that 2001 Champion Michael Schumacher took. It was a pyrrhic victory that wasn’t even a victory.

That season also contained the infamous incident when David Coulthard was unable to pass Enrique Bernoldi’s Arrows for several laps at the Monaco Grand Prix. The Scot complained, seemingly forgetting that it was his job to pass the slower Brazilian.

With Häkkinen having retired, 2002 may have been Coulthard’s chance to return to the top. But the McLaren was rather uncompetitive, firmly behind Williams in the championship. And another Finnish hot shot — Kimi Räikkönen — was now threatening to make his life a misery.

A promising start to the 2003 season — with another race win in Australia — quickly fizzled out. Kimi Räikkönen came within two points of the championship. Coulthard was way back in 7th by the end of the season.

2004 was even worse when he finished 10th. Admittedly he was in a highly uncompetitive car in what must count as one of McLaren’s worst-ever seasons. But at least Räikkönen managed to wring a spectacular win out of it in Belgium. By this stage Coulthard was looking distinctly jaded and with Juan Pablo Montoya having long since been announced for the 2005 season, it didn’t take a genius to work out which McLaren driver would get the boot.

2005, however, gave David Coulthard a new lease of life. Given the role of experienced team leader in the fledgling Red Bull team, DC impressed with some mature performances that breathed new life into his career. He was helped by Red Bull’s odd policy of switching the second race seat between Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi (who was not given as many races as originally announced), but even so he always had the upper hand over his rookie team mates. Now he was entering his period as F1’s elder statesman.

Since then his career has mostly consisted of solid performances backed up with the occasional sparkling highlight. There was an excellent podium at Monaco in 2006, with another following at Canada in 2008. In the races where experience counted — such as the treacherous conditions of Fuji in 2007 — DC excelled.

But the solid performances have dried up. No longer paired with inexperienced team-mates, DC has looked more rusty alongside the trusty Mark Webber. A disastrous start to the 2008 season which saw crash after crash after crash effectively put paid to David Coulthard’s career.

With Red Bull protégé Sebastian Vettel widely tipped to move up to the Red Bull A-team next season, the writing was on the wall for David Coulthard’s career. He had the maturity to realise that, which is why I am glad to see him throwing in the towel now rather than waiting for his performances to become more and more embarrassing.

David Coulthard is one of the most experienced drivers in the history of the sport. In fact, if he sees out the season he will be second only to Rubens Barrichello. That is a testament to his clear ability. But Coulthard’s star shone brightest in mediocre equipment. When he was driving World Championship-winning cars he failed to step up to the plate. And that is what makes him a good driver rather than a great one.

At least we can be sure we haven’t seen the last of David Coulthard. The decision to carry on at Red Bull in a development role is a smart one for Red Bull to take though. While Coulthard is quite rusty during races these days, he obviously still has a talent in terms of car set-up and development.

As for his future career, I have a feeling he could make a decent name for himself in a series like DTM. But the smart money is on him joining the BBC to take the role of post-race analyst. Coulthard is always great at interviews and has been pretty decent whenever he has attempted post-race analysis (as he has done on ITV once or twice). So I am sure he will be the right man for the job at the BBC.

At last, bluffer’s guide makes its return. For the past couple of months I’ve been too busy to continue the series, but now I have some more free time. Previous bluffer’s guides have looked at the rules and aspects of strategy. This guide will look at issues around teams and drivers: how they enter, why they enter and what their job is.

Entry requirements

At present there are ten constructors (the posh word for teams) in Formula 1. Each team enters two cars, meaning that 20 cars are entered into each event. There is nothing set in stone about these numbers. It is thought that according to the Concorde Agreement (which will be covered in a future bluffer’s guide) a minimum of 20 may enter. According to the FIA Sporting Regulations, a maximum of 24 cars may start a race.

Teams normally stick with the same two drivers throughout the season. However they may use up to four different drivers in one season, or more at the FIA’s approval.

In addition to the two race drivers, every team employs test drivers. These test drivers may be used during the Friday Practice sessions, although each team is still limited to running two cars. For this reason, teams tend to use their race drivers anyway.

A driver must be awarded an FIA Super License before he may compete in Formula 1. To achieve this, a driver must show consistent form in a lower category. Failing that, a driver may get a Super License with the unanimous approval of… whoever makes that decision — provided he has tested for at least 300km at racing speeds in a current car.

This is basically to prevent rubbish but rich drivers from paying loads of money to achieve his childhood dream of entering a Grand Prix. However, it hasn’t stopped the occasional bad egg from slipping through the net!

The decision to enter

Unlike some other sports, there is no promotion or relegation in F1. The decision to enter Formula 1 is essentially little more than a business decision. Once a team has met the FIA’s requirements, all a team has to do is be able to fund itself in order to keep going.

The huge costs involved in running an F1 team are enough to keep the list of potential entrants low. There is space for 12 teams in the Championship and only ten of them are taken. One of those teams is currently up for sale. There is little point in setting up a new team if you can easily buy an existing one.

This season began with 11 constructors. But when Super Aguri ran out of funding it had to pull out.

Similarly, drivers have few requirements to meet. They must have a Super License (as outlined in the section above). But apart from that, all they have to do to get a drive is basically to persuade a team to give them a drive.

This does not depend on talent alone, although that is of course a huge factor. Many drivers get a slot at a poorly-funded team by bringing sponsorship money. Such drivers are known as ‘pay drivers’ because they effectively pay for their drive at a team.

Some pay drivers have gone down in history as being notoriously awful. Ricardo Rosset had lots of cash as he was the heir to an underwear business. Fittingly enough, his performances in F1 were, indeed, pants.

The 2008 season is said to be the first year for a very long time (perhaps ever) when the grid did not contain any pay drivers. However, it is also thought that Nelsinho Piquet and Adrian Sutil bring substantial sponsorship moneys to their respective teams.

A team sport or an individual sport?

Formula 1 (along with most other forms of motor racing) is rather unique among sports because it is both a team sport and an individual sport. A good driver would be nowhere were it not for a team of hundreds working tirelessly to provide him with a good car. On the day of the race, an army of people analyse the race as it happens to try and come up with the best strategy for the conditions. And the efforts of the pit crew cannot go unnoticed, as they must be relied upon to ensure that pitstops are carried out smoothly.

In this sense, you can say that Formula 1 is a team sport, but one that places a huge amount of the responsibility on one individual. Once the driver is on the track, there is not much more the team can do to help him, and it is up to the driver not to make a mistake. For this reason, there are two championships in F1 — one for drivers and one for constructors.

Each team enters two drivers and these are often referred to as “team mates”. However, often there is nothing “matey” about the relationship between these two individuals. Indeed, they might hate each other because the one person they want to beat more than anyone else is their team mate, who is usually racing with equal equipment. Comparing team mates with each other is an important barometer of a driver’s skill, so it is usually in a driver’s interest to undermine his team mate.

However, pragmatically a driver has to remember that he is an employee of his team. If a team decides that it is in their best interests to help one driver more than another, they are within their rights to do this. This is known as “team orders” and is part of racing. (Team orders will be discussed in more detail in a future bluffer’s guide.)

Testing

Teams spend a lot of time testing their cars to make sure that their developments work properly before racing with them. Such tests must be held at an FIA-sanctioned circuit. Testing is limited to 30,000km per team per calendar year. This limit excludes promotional events and young driver training. A young driver is defined as a driver who has not competed in a Formula 1 event for 24 months or has not tested an F1 car for more than four days in the past 24 months.

Teams often employ test drivers whose specific job is to test the car. Often race drivers are used at test sessions in addition to test drivers. Some drivers become highly regarded for their ability to give feedback to their engineers and for their knowledge of how to set up a car. Examples of such drivers include Pedro de la Rosa, Alexander Wurz and Anthony Davidson. These drivers are all highly regarded as test drivers but struggle to get a race drive.

Car development

F1 teams do not just launch a car at the beginning of the season and race with it all year. Teams work throughout the year to improve their performance and developments are made to the cars several times per year as the teams see fit. In most cases, the car at the end of the season is completely different to the car that began the season. Check out Formula1.com’s excellent technical section to keep up with the main car developments throughout the year.

Logically, though, the largest leaps are made over the winter when there is no racing going on. Usually each car is an evolution of the previous year’s car. Sometimes cars are re-designed almost from the ground up each year. This used to happen fairly often, but is increasingly rare these days — unless a team hires a new chief aerodynamicist or some other radical team structural change.

Every time there is a major change to a chassis, its name changes. Usually the name changes in a predictable way for the start of each season. For instance, in 2007 Ferrari’s chassis was the F2007 and McLaren’s was the MP4-22. This year those teams’ chassis are the F2008 and the MP4-23 respectively.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop a team from using the same chassis for two years in a row (although this usually doesn’t happen because the pace of development is such that running a two year old chassis would be a serious disadvantage to any team) or from running two different chassis in one season — just as long, of course, as the chassis met the technical regulations. It is quite common for a team to use their old chassis for the first few races of the year if the development of the new car has been delayed for some reason. This happened to Toro Rosso this year, whose new STR3 was not used until the Monaco Grand Prix, six races into the season.

Liveries

Historically, teams ran traditional liveries with each nationality having a traditional colour. Britain, of course, had British Racing Green, and Italian cars ran in the deep scarlet colour (‘Rosso Corsa’) made so famous by Ferrari. Of course, with the introduction of sponsorship in the late 1960s, this was never going to last and now teams appear in whatever colours take their fancy. But is it true that F1 cars are “glorified cigarette packets”?

The arrival of sponsorship does not mean that the history has gone forever. McLaren (Mercedes) run with a predominantly silver livery and red car numbers, a reflection of the Silver Arrows’ history. BMW run with their corporate colours of navy blue, though the majority of the car is white, Germany’s traditional racing colour.

Honda and Toyota have also run in Japan’s traditional white and red (although today Honda runs in a white, green and blue ‘Earth’ car to highlight environmental concerns). When tobacco sponsorship was still allowed in F1, Honda cleverly used the Lucky Strike logo to double up as the traditional ‘red sun’. Ferrari, of course, are famous for running their traditional ‘Rosso Corsa’ colour. However, in recent years this shade has become lighter, more similar to the shade of red used in Marlboro packets (Phillip Morris still heavily fund Ferrari even though tobacco sponsorship technically does not exist in F1).

Ligier / Prost used blue until the team’s demise in 2002. When Jaguar briefly participated in F1 at the start of this decade, it ran in a deep green. However, it was slightly lighter than British Racing Green, apparently to make sponsor logos stand out better on television. The team that Jaguar bought, the (Ford-powered) Stewart team ran in white and blue, the American racing colours.

Of course, there is nothing in F1’s rules that dictates that teams should use traditional colours. These rules were relaxed in 1970. But clearly many F1 teams still value their heritage enough to run colour schemes that are inspired by history.

Some aspects of the livery are restricted though. The two cars of each team must look “substantially” similar at every event in a year. In 1999, the new BAR team (owned by British American Tobacco) wanted to advertise two of its cigarette brands, one on each car. However, the FIA would not be moved. BAR’s compromise was to advertise one brand along the left side of the car and a different brand on the right. The resulting livery was a real mess and widely derided. From 2000 onwards, BAR’s ditched the ‘dual livery’ scheme.

Each car must display the badge of the car make on the front of the car. The name and national flag of the driver should be displayed on the side (usually just behind the driver’s helmet on the engine cover). The car number should also be visible from the front and the side. However, many spectators complain that the numbers are so small that you cannot see them.

Nowadays, a different way of telling apart the two cars of each team is to look at the ‘T-cam’ (the onboard camera that appears on top of the rollover structure just above and behind the driver’s head). For the lead driver, this is a fluorescent red. For a team’s second driver, it is fluorescent yellow.

Of course, another way to tell drivers apart is to look at their helmets. Traditionally, drivers design their own helmets although these days they are covered in sponsor logos just like the cars are. A good helmet design can become as famous as a historic car livery. Just think of Ayrton Senna’s yellow helmet, Graham Hill’s deep blue helmet with white tabs around the top (an adaptation of a London Rowing Club design, and also used by Graham’s son Damon) or Jackie Stewart’s white helmet with a tartan band around the top.

Car numbers

A minor, but interesting, point is how car numbers are allocated. Car numbers are published by the FIA before the start of each season and remain the same all season.

The current World Champion always races with the number 1. His team mate is allocated number 2. In instances when the World Champion is not participating in the race, it is probable that the Constructors Champion would use the numbers 0 and 2.

Under the old system of allocating car numbers (which ran until 1995), this happened in 1993 and 1994 when Damon Hill ran with the number 0 for two years running. The first time was because of the retirement of Nigel Mansell and the second time was due to the retirement of Alain Prost.

After the numbers 1 (or 0) and 2 are allocated, the following numbers are allocated according to the finishing position in the previous year’s Constructors Championship. So, ignoring the Constructor bearing numbers 1 (or 0) and 2, the highest-scoring constructor will carry the numbers 3 and 4, the next highest-scoring will carry the numbers 5 and 6, and so on. The number 13 is skipped for unclear reasons, though it’s safe to assume that this is due to superstition.

Not all superstitious numbers are removed though. In 2005 Japanese driver Takuma Sato was allocated the number 4 which is an unlucky number in Japanese culture (ominously being closely associated with death). True enough, his season was riddled with bad luck and strange mistakes.

This season McLaren are racing with the numbers 22 and 23 because they were excluded from last year’s Constructors Championship. Super Aguri were allocated numbers 20 and 21. Although Super Aguri no longer participates in F1, McLaren’s numbers remain 22 and 23 for consistency throughout the season.