Pre-season updates, and a new Blogmobile

Greetings Internet,

The green lights in Melbourne lie less than a fortnight away - even though the race has been stolen from the BBC by the evil folk down at Sky HQ, gave their building a little shouting at in town the other day too. But here in the less well equipped blog HQ we have to play with the cards that have been dealt, the blog may not have been given a promising hand, but defeat is not really an option. I shall curtail my rant for now, and bring proceedings back to a realm of sanity and calm.

The season is almost upon us now, and all the pre-season plans are beginning to fall into place, both out there in the testing sessions in Spain, and here on this little corner of the internet. It seems both Marussia and HRT have encountered issues when attempting to pass the compulsory crash testing requirements, something that must instil so much hope and comfort in their drivers. Having said that, it does mean the teams have a design that the blog can reveal to the world, so without further ado, the final two cars to make up F1 2012:

Firstly the Marussia MR01, and looking at it and the other shots sprouting up across the internet, and it does look painfully basic. One front facing image makes the machine look a little like something from a lower formula. However points are regained by having a normal, conventional sloping nose, no odd tumorous forehead design here. Wonder if the CFD design process decided foreheads were appalling, this normality almost makes up for the weird striped livery the team seem to have gone with this season... why Marussia why...

Finally the contender from HRT, and contrary to popular belief the Spanish team can put together a car which is different than it's predecessor. The F112 is a step on the F111, and with a different, yet decent livery - even without sponsorship once more. Even the likes of HRT have added this step in the nose leaving only McLaren and Marussia with traditional designs. The F112 does look as basic as the MR01, but time will tell in the battle for the final row of the grid. At least this time HRT will be in Melbourne a little more prepared than in 2011.

All this talk of new cars bring me onto the next order of business in this the pre-season update.  After half a season of strong service from the last of the blogmobiles - the 2007 Champcar DP01- there comes a time when sadly things must move on. A new year full of all sorts of... interesting designs from the field, demands that the blog follows suit, to keep up with the pace of a rapidly changing and developing sporting environment.

So the quest began for a new blogmobile to bring in the new season, scouring the annuls of mods available for the simulation software operated here at blog HQ, of course there has to be a set of criteria that need to be validated before a new car hits the virtual track. Mainly it has to be roughly representative of the purpose of it all here, and naturally I have to have access to the mod templates so that the livery can be mapped to the model. Additionally it would be preferable to have a machine from a team not currently competing in the championship for impartiality of course, hence why all the previous versions have been from the States. But now time for a little change and the year's first video reveals the new blogmobile...

An undeniably fine machine, extracted from the annuls of Formula one, it did slighly shock things here realising that this car is now seven years old - seven years since Minardi have been missing from the sport quite sad really. But despite being older than the DP01 by two years, the PS05 is technically a long way removed from the standards set in the champcar series, and should be a step forward for blogmobiles, and bringing back an iconic team.But before I end up reminiscing any more time to cut to some photos:

This time being able to film and visualise the car in DX9, something almost unthinkable when it comes to this rather under-powered computer that fuels blog HQ. Safe to say the results are shiny, everything is shiny - even the top gear runway is shiny.

The new livery is unsurprisingly yellow, but I like painting things yellow - when I get round to it at some point my room is going to go very yellow indeed, but painting in the real world is more complex then making these liveries. My efforts at set design will easily attest to that

This wavy design that has been draped over the bodywork was inspired by the DPR team from GP2 who ran their Asia series cars in yellow and black with these waves and I quite liked it so borrowed it a little.

 All painted up and ready for it's first official session in Melbourne when filming on the track begins next week - so things are in place on the site as well, with a new table for those incoming bonus points and a brand new page listing the blokes who get to play with the actual race cars, in actual Australia rather than sitting in a corner of a room in Northern England, but we can't have everything.

So until next time, this is farewell from blog HQ.