The Force India is set to be launched today! There will be more on the blog when the car is launched later today.

Links

The Art of F1: Is the era of sponsor-based liveries over?

Tom Bellingham, a guest poster over at The Art of F1 looks at if the era of sponsor-based liveries is over: “So it looks like the time of classic F1 liveries are over…. or is it? This year colour has come back into the sport with a bang, most noticeably with the new Renault. Many people wondered why Renault didn’t use black and yellow in the first place but of course, they went for team sponsors colours instead. It is a real shame it took the spy scandal, resulting in ING leaving the team, for Renault to go back to their classic colours. Just looking at the testing photos you can see how much the Renault stands out on track and I, like many others, think it looks brilliant.”

Motor Sport Musings: And the Next World Rally Champion is…

Dank tells us who he thinks will win the 2010 World Rally Championship: “The World Rally Championship season commences at Sweden this weekend, and with six titles under his belt already, is there anyone out there who can stop Sebastien Loeb, the undisputed king of modern rallying?”

William F1 Team: Golf adopts Formula One Technology in Unique Williams License Agreement

A press release from the Williams F1 team displaying details of the team’s new license agreement with Williams Sports, a US golf equipment company. Being a golfer myself, this is interesting stuff! “The purpose of the partnership is to inject Williams F1’s Formula One technology into the design and manufacture of Williams Sports’ golfing equipment. The initial areas of technical partnership are in the aerodynamic profiling of golf club shafts, ferrules and heads, and the application of composites and alloys materials science in club design.”

Comment of the day

Today’s comment of the day goes to james for his noting of the change in Kimi Raikkonen’s behaviour since moving to WRC, on my What F1 could learn from rallying post. Well done James!

“fantastic post,I agree in rallying far more freedom no silly politics and not be run by a dictator this is why kimi left f1 its a more relaxed enviornment,no politics teams get on well and the fans get to meet there heroes,since kimi has left f1 he has been a lot more relaxed and has been smiling a lot,f1 is losing touch with the fans in my opinion”

james

On the forum

Yesterday I launched An F1 Blog’s 2010 predictions league! It has an amazing prize if you win! All the details of the league are on the About page in the Predictions League section of the forum.

Pics of the day

Today’s pic of the day is of Norweigan WRC driver Petter Solberg demonstrating his new red & yellow livery. More on this livery here.

Blast from the past

The very successful Red Bull RB5 was launched on this day last year in Jerez. This is an image of Sebastian Vettel sat in the garage during the car’s debut test. The car was arguably the best designed of 2009, and many of the features have inspired the cars which will be sat on the grid this year.

For those who didn’t recognise Seb Vettel’s helmet in this image when I posted a clue to today’s blast from the past pic of the day on Twitter, this is the helmet he used for the opening races of the season. It is known as the ‘disco’ helmet.

We are set for another quiet day in F1, but the Force India launch is tomorrow.

Links

The Bull Run is GO GO GO!

Tommy B’s excellent Toro Rosso blog, Forza Toro Rosso has become The Bull Run, as it moves to focus more on both of the Red Bull sister teams: “After much deliberation, I decided to change my blog to focus more on both Red Bull teams. I thought long and hard about it and realised during the season I’d like to talk about Red Bull Racing as well as Toro Rosso.” I have updated the link in our blogroll.

NASCAR.com: Patrick finishes sixth in stock-car debut at Daytona

Saturday night’s ARCA Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 at Daytona International Speedway was both Nelson Piquet Jr and Danica Patrick’s first ever stock car race. This is a link to the race report on NASCAR.com.

The ARCA race on Saturday night was live blogged on our F1 Live page, with live blogging and a video stream. 50 of you visited and participated in the chat, with just short of 1000 messages being sent. It was great fun and thanks to all who came along. We will be doing another live blogging event next Sunday for the NASCAR Daytona 500, and in every F1 qualifying and race session in 2010. We are also looking into the prospect of live blogging during GP2 races. All the info you need will be posted on our Twitter page in due course.

BBC: Successful start for Lotus’ new Cosworth V8 engine

Audio clip on the BBC of Lotus starting their Cosworth V8 for the first time, which is the first Lotus Cosworth to be fired up in 27 years.

Nico Hulkenberg.net now in English

Williams driver Nico Hulkenberg‘s website is now in English.

Comment of the day

There were too many comments of the day yesterday to make me pick just one! There were some crackers from steph90, Cubejam and Red Andy though on my post What F1 could learn from rallying.

Pics of the day

Today’s pic of the day is of Danica Patrick making her stock car debut in the ARCA Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night.

A blast from the past

On this day in 2005, the Jordan EJ15 had it’s first track outing. Here is a pic of Tiago Monteiro driving it, at the Silverstone shakedown. The E15 was the last ever Jordan F1 car.