Winter Off Season Update 1: We finally have new cars to look at - and other things

Greetings Internet, 

It has been a while since my fat stubby fingers were slammed against the keyboard in this part of the internet - but against my better judgment and disappointment of everyone else online Blog HQ is still here. Over the winter there have been many storylines and events which for the most part involved Red Bull complaining about engines... and then everyone else complaining about engines. The engine saga will likely rumble on for all of eternity, or at least until someone finally manages to build something that can give Mercedes a good kicking from time to time. For some reason I think the end of time might happen first - and as the universe collapses in on itself Christian Horner will still find ways of blaming the apocalypse on Renault. Speaking of Renault, there was a slight change in their driver line-up timed to coincide with a rather pointless launch event, but more on that later. 

Who else will build barrier forts now?

F1's demolition derby specialist Pastor Maldonado ran into a bit of a financial concrete wall as his Venezuelan overlords at PDVSA forgot to pay Lotus (now Renault) the money for 2016. So without money to cover the frequent flyer miles to the stewards office and those hefty repair bills - Pastor suddenly found himself sitting in the unemployment line. As a replacement Renault turned to McLaren exile Kevin Magnussen, when the Dane was announced earlier in the year Renault instantly noticed that their insurance premiums was significantly reduced. In some respects it is a shame to see Pastor crashing out of the sport, because his destructive madness and general lunacy was entertaining and the world as a whole had someone to laugh at. Magnussen is a better prospect in the long term we assume, but a lot less fun - that said he did equal Pastors tally of number of opponents flipped when he upended Massa in Germany. We have gained Gutierrez at Haas who came close to scoring as many penalties as Maldonado, and of course there is Mad Max Verstappen to inject a bit of chaos in the absence of the lord of destruction.

Elsewhere in other news Manor have now finalised their drivers and thus the grid is complete ahead of testing on Monday. With the acquisition of Mercedes engines for the new season Manor opened the crates containing the new power units only to find the German manufacturer had stashed a new driver in amongst the polystyrene packaging. Just like the Grosjean move to Haas - the rest of the world sort of knew that there might be a stowaway in the Mercedes deal. That stowaway is DTM Champion Pascal Wehrlein following the same route into F1 as Paul Di Resta and to a less successful extent Christijan Albers. 

Can we move the German GP to the Norisring?

The deal is similar to the one that placed Bianchi at Marussia with help from Ferrari - Pascal is quite highly rated and just like Jules did, have the potential to get the most out of the underdog chassis. Alongside Pascal is another new face, Will Stevens can return to England and pursue a career as a Danny Dyer impersonator as his seat was handed to another well funded rooker. Just like Pastor Maldonado, national oil money paid for a drive for Rio Haryanto from Indonesia. Rio finished 4th in last season's GP2 championship - it might have been third if the final race lasted more than two corners before being abandoned. He doesn't come with impeccable credentials but he has money, and for a small team like Manor - money is rather important. 

A new car at last

So onto to the main theme of today's surprise post - the first car has been revealed to the world. There have been other launches in the past few days and weeks but this is the first actual car presented by Williams. 

Williams' revolutionary idea to build race car designed to go round corners

On the surface it doesn't seem like the squad have done too much different, the livery is the same, the nose is the same and so on. But apparently the team have done some revolutionising - which could mean anything from setting the suspension up at a new angle or plotting to overthrow the government. The latter sounding more entertaining but I think they might need to re-hire a certain Venezuelan to truly make an impact in parliament. The idea Willams have had is to focus more on going round corners - which probably a solid idea given that there are quite a few corners - instead of focusing on ultimate low drag speed. The aim is to have a car which is more versatile and doesn't turn into a sloth as soon as the heavens open. The only evidence of this on the car is the emergence of a few winglets on top of the sidepods and some resculpting around the air intakes in comparison to the 2015 model. It might bring them closer to Ferrari more often, but we haven't seen what the Italians have built... even though several key personnel at Ferrari are actually British. The noises out of Maranello suggest that they have taken a 'radical' approach - whatever that actually means, probably that they've added more pepper and parmesan to everything in the catering truck or something 

Another New Car...

While I was writing about the revolutions at Williams and things Ferrari decided to get in on the act and present their new shiny car. Across the void of cyberspace... and probably the real world too but I try to avoid that place... people were concerned about the amount of white paint that rumours suggested would be on the car...

Williams would like their nosecone back

Well those rumours were not wrong when the new Ferrari finally broke cover today - the engine cover and the cockpit are have been bleached of the former scarlet paintwork. The other dashes of white don't seem out of place but while the engine cover is a evolution of the livery... it just seems wrong. Adding to the list of things that seem out of place  - the 2016 nose is almost identical to the Williams and is the first Ferrari to go with the... extension at the front since they made an appearance in 2014. The nose is probably more fit for purpose and for the regulations but looks less well designed than its predecessor. The rear of the car however does seem more delicately sculpted as the sidepod vanishes underneath the rear suspension housing. I'm not an aerodynamicist or even a proper engineer but it sort of looks like a car designed by a committee, or at least painted by one. However there is no real disagreement at blog HQ that is certainly is a departure from recent exports from the team and might make things interesting at the front... well almost.

Mercedes

While we are all looking at new pictures surfacing as testing approaches Toto and his gang have been running the new car at Silverstone in what will likely be called a filming day/shakedown. From the one photo that is doing the rounds on twitter at the moment it seems as if the Germans might find 2016 a little more challenging...

Mercedes already so far ahead they've won the British GP in February 

After all, going for a blurry, slightly pixelated design can't be the most aerodynamic option. Given the fuzziness of the shot it is unclear what changes have been made - but the team could probably slap the engine in a golf cart and lap the field with it... Besides since the rate of development is so high, the parts that are fitted to the car for testing in Spain might be completely different to those on the car at the Silverstone 'test' event. 

Red Bull... not a new car, but new paint

Red Bull took some time off from berating their engine this week to have a little launch of their own. After falling out with almost every other engine supplier at the back end of 2015, the team eventually crawled back to Renault and asked watchmaker Tag-Heuer to help out. Clearly Horner has decided that if he can't have all the power he wants from the car, he'll team up with someone who can tinker with the timing to make the lap time look more favourable. All this meant that the team have been a little busy trying to get the car ready so when it came to launch time - they slapped on some paint to an older chassis and showed that off insead. 

If losing - pretend to be Toro Rosso

It seems Red Bull have run out of the shiny paint they have been using over the past few seasons - perhaps Infiniti took it with them when the brand parted company with the team. The new paint is a lot darker than we've been used to and is probably geared to make them look more similar to the Junior Squad at Toro Rosso - because it is reasonably likely that those whippersnappers might have a faster car with their Ferrari engines. The matte paint may take some getting used to but we'll see when their actual car is revealed.

Renault... not really a new anything of sorts

Then there was Renault... they were the first out of the gate with a launch party event, but didn't actually launch anything. They announced that they were releasing Maldonado back into the wild and that Kevin was the named replacement but that's it. Yet the launch contained a car painted... well some of it was painted... in a livery they weren't planning on using, and the car itself was the 2015 model. So they didn't have anything to share with the world other than reminding us that they have officially taken over the Lotus team and have become Renault after selling the naming rights at the end of 2011. 

In an urgent appeal - Renault are asking for donations of yellow paint

As you can see Renault just painted an old car black and slapped some stickers on it - the rear of the engine cover used some of Red Bull's matte paint, something they probably claimed in the divorce. The team have said that this 'livery' isn't its final form - so with any luck they will pay a visit to their Formula E team's paint shed and stick a eDams-esque colour scheme on it before sending it back out into to the world. 

Blog HQ in 2016

I have received literally zero questions about the plans for 2016 from the tens of people who accidently end up on this part of the internet, and I'm not entirely sure I have any answers to those non-existent questions. I am aware that the latter half of 2015 did enter a little bit of a decline... well more of an accelerated spiral into a dark and endless silence. That was fuelled by many factors, most of those relating to time. Over the course of a standard race weekend, operating this corner of the internet does take up a large amount of time - which includes watching the race itself and delivering the reports and things afterwards. Time I was struggling to find in the latter races of last season and as a result several reports were not completed or were delayed by several days. I have been spending a lot less time in the house and as a result the simple act of sitting down and watching a race on a Sunday afternoon isn't as simple and as easy as it once was. A lot of this is Bernie's fault - because in the end it is always a good idea to blame Bernie - the price of F1 has made it increasingly inaccessible to the general public. Free-to-air coverage is a bleak shadow of what it once was and therefore when I am away from Blog HQ catching up with the sport is often far more difficult. 

Even on free TV weekends, other commitments mean that time is also thin on the ground. It took three days to watch the Abu-Dhabi finale last year over a series of lunch breaks. It isn't practical to devote eight or nine hours on a Sunday to watch and document each lap and each on track duel. But at the same time I would ideally like to keep this part of the internet operational in some shape or form, it would require a restructure of how things are delivered and since Blog HQ has been running since 2011 it would be a shame to see it die out. At this moment in time I don't really know how to proceed, whether it is through a series of sporadic articles rather than needlessly long qualifying and race reports. I would like to revive the bonus points tally after it fell into disrepair last season. There should be a couple of posts during testing as more cars are revealed, but as far as the main season goes that is very much undecided.