Christies is auctioning some fantastic vintage posters in London on Wednesday including a number of old motor racing and Formula One posters.
They date from the 1920’s to the the 1970’s and include Le Mans, Silverstone, Monza and, of course, Monaco.
Most of the Monaco posters pre-date the modern Formula One World Championship. The poster to the right is from 1936, the year Monaco became part of the European Championship, and seems to depict a Mercedes-Benz W25K rounding La Rascasse. There is also a poster from the 1966 race, the year McLaren made their Formula One debut.
The earliest poster is one by Noel Alphonse for the 1927 French Grand Prix held at the Autodrome de Montlhéry outside of Paris.
Originally called the Autodrome parisien, this track had extremely high bankings and in 1925 Alberto Ascari’s father, Antonio was killed there while leading the French Grand Prix in an Alfa Romeo P2.
(Via Dinosaurs and Robots)
I like a press release with swear words in it. In the “rather impressive press kit” accompanying Toro Rosso’s launch of their new car they reveal that Red Bull’s motives for taking over the Minardi team in 2005 were that they “just liked pissing people off by buying a second team.” Nice. STR have their own unique style.
What is not so unique is their 2009 F1 car, the STR4, which was rolled out at the Circuit de Catalunya just outside Barcelona on Monday morning. At first glance it looks like a carbon copy of the RB5 and, indeed, it uses the same Adrian Newey designed chassis as the Red Bull car. But acording to Toro Rosso’s Technical Director, Giorgio Ascanelli, the STR4 is not just a rebadged RB5:
Its a common misconception that before the start of the season a big truck turns up in Faenza from Milton Keynes, its back door folds down and, hey presto, a fully-built Toro Rosso car rolls out. In fact, Scuderia Toro Rosso has far more control over its technical destiny, right from the design stage through to construction.
I guess most of the differences are under the skin though because it’s going to be hard to tell these two cars apart on the track. Replacing the Red Bull’s Renault engine with Ferrari power caused a lot of redesign of the internal plumbing as Ascanelli explains:
Different engines have different heat rejection and different operating temperatures, with materials specified to different levels. Also, the tolerances, which you have to respect when building an engine, are tuned in such a way that an engine works at its best within a defined temperature range. This in itself conditions the radiators and also all of the internal aerodynamics. That then impacts on the aero side and this work is also done in Faenza.
All of this in-house design work will be good preparation for the team. Next year, the Toro Rosso customer car exemption will run out and the team will have to design and build their own car from scratch.
Pictures of the new car below:
Jenson Button put the new Brawn GP BGP 001 through its paces in a shakedown test at Silverstone on Friday. The team will head to the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona next week and then Jerez for a further three days testing before packing up and heading to Australia for the opening Grand Prix on 27-29 March.
As the pictures below show, Jenson Button is clearly happy to be back in a Formula One car and Rubens Barrichello looks happy just to be there.
Two main nose shapes seemed to have emerged in the 2009 car designs. The BGP 001 has the low nose favoured by the likes of McLaren and Williams rather than the high style of the Toyota and Force India. The sidepods are high and wide like the McLaren and the front wing seems to be quite a complex arrangement.
Overall I think it’s quite a nice looking car. Enjoy the pictures.
Autosport.com have posted the first image of the new Brawn GP BGP 001. Jenson Button took the team’s 2009 challenger out for a few shakedown laps of Silverstone today ahead of the car’s first full test in Barcelona. According to Autosport, “the car features a wide low nose, and highly sculpted sidepods”.
There is also a distinct lack of sponsorship although that’s nothing new for this team…
But the big question on everyone’s lips is, will the car be be any good? I think there are reasons to be hopeful.
Honda have produced some fairly rubbish racing cars lately but they knew pretty early on in 2008 that their car sucked and even sticking “dumbo ears” on it wouldn’t make it more driveable. So presumably Honda switched their development to the 2009 car a long time ago; sooner, even, than BMW and news coming out of Honda over the last few months always seemed to point out the team were still working on the 2009 car.
Secondly, the Mercedes-Benz engine the team have acquired is looking pretty handy in the new Force India car and it powered Lewis Hamilton to the Championship last year. I’m actually quite impressed the team have managed to fit the new engine so quickly. We don’t know how long Brawn GP have had the Mercedes-Benz powerplant to work with but refitting the VJM02 to the new engine caused a lot of work for Force India as a change of engine and gearbox causes knock-on effects to other areas of the car. Of course the Brackley engineers outnumber the Force India team but to get the engine integrated in a relatively short time is good work. Whether this engine transplant causes reliability issues we will have to wait and see.
And lastly, they have Ross Brawn in charge. The man knows his racing cars. While Brawn couldn’t rescue Honda from the RA108 last year, this is now his team and he has been involved in the complete development of the new car.
So we won’t have an idea how fast the new car is until the Barcelona test and we won’t really know if can be competitive until we get to Melbourne. Can’t wait.
Image: LAT
The new JPH01 Formula Two car was unveiled at Brands Hatch on Monday. The car was rolled out in front of Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head before British Touring Car driver Steven Kane took it out on the track.
Designed by Williams, the car is powered by a 1.8 litre turbo Audi engine with 400bhp on standard boost and 450bhp on overboost.
While GP2 has been the main feeder series for Formula One in recent years, for much of the history of Formula One, Formula Two has been the stepping stone to the top series.
Formula Two first started in 1948 as a cheaper complement to the expensive Formula One Grand Prix cars. In fact, in 1952 and 1953, Formula One was so expensive and there were so few entrants that all the Championship races in those years were run with Formula Two cars.
Now, after an absence of 25 years, the FIA are hoping the return of Formula Two will provide an affordable route for young drivers to progress to Formula One without having to find the enormous sums required for GP2.
The top three finishers in the 2009 Formula Two Championship will be eligible for FIA Superlicences and the Champion will win a test with the Williams Formula One team.
The driver lineup includes ex-F1 driver Martin Brundle’s son, Alex and World Champion John Surtees’s son, Henry as well as Natacha Gachnang who is the cousin of Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Buemi.
The F2 Championship starts at Spains Circuit de Valencia in May, partnering the World Touring Cars.
More pictures of the launch below:
