First Picture: The new 2008 Honda livery.....or is it a BMW??

[Osella]

for example 1996 Jordan's "yellow" was clearly too "colourless" or "faded", but ugly isn't the proper word to describe it).... For eyes some colour schemes are more satisfying to see and others not so much, but all in all - that doesn't change anything, does it?

Actually the 1996 Jordan livery was gold, the same colour as Benson & Hedges' cigarette packets due to their sponsorship.

And yes, it does matter. The 1969 Lotus was easily the class of the field, but it was the Gold Leaf sponsorship that was talked about as much as the wings on the suspension. Ferrari are red, they just wouldn't look the same in yellow or white, as they ran in second teams in the 60's. And it makes a difference to the supporters too; Brabham supporters (if there were any by then!) in 1992 were suddenly faced with a decade's worth of white and dark blue being replaced by blue and pink! Are you really going to buy a bright blue and pink t-shirt if the team changes it's colours? So it makes a difference in marketing, merchandising, and the 'feel' of the car.

Any sportscar in Gulf colours suddenly attracts attention, sportscars and rally cars in Martini colours get that extra 'oooh' factor, as it evokes memories of past success and amazing cars.

To my mind, Honda have made a mistake and although you get the impression that the toning-down of the earth livery is indicative of a more single-minded approach to the racing (although not as purposeful as BMW's), it also seems to indicate they they are somewhat giving up on the pretence of their 'green' F1 team too..
It just looks messy, and doesn't really give the immediate impression of a team going places, and I don't think it will do them any favours from a marketing point of view either. Let's hope for them that their odd-looking (Arrows A23-a-like) car delivers them more success than last year, or they might just as well paint the whole car black and leave them in the pits!

[Giuseppe F1]

I dont understand people saying how the team have 'abandoned' their Earth positioning by changing from last years very explicit and very literal 'Earth' car by going with this new livery - theyve merely 'adapted' it and as silly and simple as it may sound, alot of this could bedown to simple logistics.

I recall watching an old video clip over at HondaRacingTV...

...the work involved in applying the 2007 Earth livery, especially when the team reverted to using a 'plastic shrinking' technique to apply the earth graphics later on in the season, was painstaking and would cost the team many, many extra man hours and cost over a season and im sure this was a factor in perhaps going with a 'simpler', less obvious/bold definition of the earth concept this year - livery-wise.

I recall a book I have which tracks the first year/set up of BAR in 1999 and theres a section showing how on the '555' side of the car - the mechanics/graphic guys had to painstakingly line-up, cross reference and manually apply hundereds of star stickers to the livery for each livery application and re-touch after races - imagine all that extra work and cost over a season where say, a Ferrari team would simply have to airbrush the car red and off they go.

The more I see it, actually think the car looks ok and actually pretty funky particularly from this angle which also does a better job than the side-view of showing the 'earth' aspect of the livery over the rear of the car:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...ge_display.php


The one thing strangely that I see being an issue going forwards is none other than................Marco Andretti.


If indeed Marco wins the Indy 500 this year, I feel having conquered the Andretti Indy curse, his long expected move into F1 could come sooner rather than later and he could be groomed to replace a retiring Rubens Barrichello from the 2009 season...

...well, with the inevitable media/marketing buzz this will ensue owing to the Andretti name and the long-coveted USA star surely the amount of commercial deals around such a move would be huge, with any potential American companies/US sponsors coming along for the ride wishing to have space on the car.... and how this would work with the Earth concept.

Who knows, maybe it would work fine and any new sponsors resultant from a Honda-Andretti-F1 link up would buy into the Earth concept and opt-out of on car branding as have other blue-chip global companies ala Ray Ban, Universal, Seiko, Fila, Gatorade etc..

[Stuartf12007]

The best part of it is the Red 'H' on the nose otherwise its a crap livery.

[Hawkmoon]

Well, I think it's better than last years livery. But then again, last years was so bad that almost anything would have been an improvement.

Overall I think they've done a decent job of marrying Honda's traditional white/red with the Earth theme. I like the stripes up the nose and the large numbers. At a glance it may be easy to confuse it with the BMW but I doubt there's ever been a season that didn't have a livery clash between two teams.

What's more interesting is the overall shape of the car. The very angular front wing and barge boards look like they've been simply tacked on so that they could present the car. The front wing in particular looks very rudimentary and I it will be on the car come Melbourne.

[Sleeper]

I'm going to be aone in this but I much preferec last years livery, and that was one of the best out there. Theres just too much white on the new car.

[wedge]

Horrible livery! As bad as the Lucky Strike/555 livery!

Last year's was better, it was like the car was sponsored by Google Maps!

There will no doubt be confusion between the honda, toyota, bmw, super aguri, force india and possibly even mclaren in some instances.

Like British Racing Green, white and red are the traditional racing colours of Japan, white being also the original colour for Germany.

[ShiftingGears]

Nice!

[Cozzie]

It seems rather mismatched. I don't hate it, it's just bizzare!

[cy bais]

It seems rather mismatched. I don't hate it, it's just bizzare!

i think so too.

[wmcot]

I think it's alright. Not the best, not the worst and certainly better than last year (although we didn't see much of last year's car on TV except for the brief moments when they were being lapped!) Still, as many have pointed out, the colors are too close to BMW and if Williams goes with the blue and white like last year, things could get really confusing during long camera shots!