The critical car launch element F1 teams are foolish to ignore

After a super-long winter break thanks to the World Cup-enforced early finish to the 2022 Formula 1 campaign, fans have been waiting with bated breath for launch season to begin. While excitement and intrigue levels are nowhere near as high as they were 12 months ago, when F1 embarked on its new rules era, launch season is always an important stepping stone in the journey through a grand prix year.

F1’s technical aspects remain very important and no matter the depth that people enjoy digging into with each team’s challenger – whether it is simply admiring the new colour scheme, or it’s diving deep into the positioning of front wing strakes – everyone loves looking at the new cars.

Unlike F1 race weekends, where teams’ performance on track and their ability to set the agenda from it are wholly dependent on what their rivals are doing, a bespoke launch day is a fantastic opportunity for teams to grab the spotlight all to themselves.

But with that great power comes great responsibility. And, as the last week has shown, it is all too easy to not align expectations with reality. In this social media era, where images are pored over in great detail and topics can get trending very quickly, it is more important than ever that teams do not try to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. Peak annoyance is when fans are told to expect one thing, but then get given something totally different.

In launch season, the worst crime of all is to state that you are going to present a new car, you pull the covers back on something that you say is the new car, and then it is quickly found out that it’s either a plain show car or simply last year’s model repainted. Nobody wins in that scenario.

That is why a number of teams have become crystal clear about exactly what they are planning to do on launch day. If there is no full-on new car render, or actual physical machine, then a lot of teams are rightly explicit that what they are hosting is either a ‘livery launch’ or a ‘season launch.’

Red Bull won over nobody with its 'fake' RB19 launch

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

So when Haas got pole position this year for its own launch day, it stated from the beginning that this was simply its 2023 livery. The day offered exactly what it said on the tin; a short press release, some images of the new colour scheme and job done. Everyone was happy.

Earlier this week, Williams made clear that it was holding a season and livery launch, while Alfa Romeo made sure to give away as much as it could with its renders of the C43 – even though the covers that were pulled back at its factory only revealed a re-liveried show car.

Where things got murky, and where fans got a bit upset, was with Red Bull’s New York spectacular last week. While the energy drinks giant did a great job in making a big impact, and helping further ratchet up interest in F1 in the United States, the way it claimed that the car on show was an RB19 – whereas it looked identical (including the giveaway 2022 mirrors) to last year’s RB18 – did not earn it any brownie points.

In the world where every element of F1 content is analysed and re-analysed, launches have also morphed into something much bigger than perhaps they deserve to be

Twelve months on from the team annoying fans when it tried to claim one of Liberty Media’s original show cars was its RB18 at the 2022 launch, you would have thought the team would have learned its lesson. There would have been nothing wrong with Red Bull being explicit that it was not the new car at the New York event, and it was instead a season and livery launch – with the added bonus of the Ford announcement.

It is understandable that F1 teams are always juggling a host of conflicting demands when it comes to launches. On the one hand, they want to maximise exposure for their sponsors, get people talking about their team, get trending on social media and build up some positive headlines and momentum going onto the new season. However, pushing back against the desire to get a shiny new car ready is the competitive reality of F1.

One would be hard-pressed to find a single engineer or car designer in the pitlane who would be happy to bring forward their deadlines to get the car finished earlier than everyone else just so it’s ready for a launch. And why give rivals a three-week head start in spotting some clever design tricks that you have thought of?

In the world where every element of F1 content is analysed and re-analysed (remember the Internet going crazy thinking there was a fuzzy image of Frank Williams’ head in a completely unrelated Porsche Instagram post), launches have also morphed into something much bigger than perhaps they deserve to be.

Alfa Romeo gave fans a new car and livery to look at with its launch, even if what is seen right now is just a first version

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

It is almost impossible for them to ever be the true reflection of the car that will be taken into battle at the first race, so they will never be as such the ‘100 percent new car’ – and it would be wrong to expect them to be. The configuration of what teams have ready in early February is never necessarily going to be exactly like what they will be taking to the first test and races.

So where can the line truly get drawn on what is and isn’t a new car? Is it enough to be just the monocoque with some old aero parts, or does it have to be more than that to be genuine? Are renders any better or worse than a physical car that could be a few iterations different?

We could tread into the area of Theseus’s paradox here – about whether or not an object which has had all its parts replaced is fundamentally the same. Think of George Washington’s axe, which has had its handle replaced three times and its head replaced twice, but is still the original...

The folly of over-analysis of launch cars is something that a number of team bosses have wised up to over the years. I recall a conversation with former Renault F1 chief Cyril Abiteboul at the start of 2020 when his squad held a season launch in Paris that did not feature any car at all – beyond the smallest of glimpses on a video screen of some basic renders.

He felt it a complete waste of time to hold a launch event that featured detailed renders, or a ‘fake’ show car, prior to the start of testing when the new machine would run in a pretty final configuration for the first time. Frustrations for him had reached a peak after the start of 2019 when people started analysing in great detail images of the team’s then launch car – which proved to be very different from what emerged at the start of the season.

He said at the time: “After last year, I read what you write, and I read what people say about what you write about the pictures that we post, and I got extremely frustrated from people, you know, really reacting to the cars as if they are the [real] thing.

“But actually, no one is capable of presenting a [true] car. If your team is on schedule, you don't have a car waiting here for a couple of hours or days. Your car is built and going straight to Barcelona. That is an optimised schedule.

Renault assembled the world's media in 2020 for its launch to show off... nothing

Photo by: James Moy/XPB/Renault F1

“So on that basis, our only option was to have a fake car, a show car altered to look like this year's car. But that is a waste of money and the results will be frankly below optimal. [Plus] people will always interpret based on that, so rather than that, no car. For anyone interested in the car, look at the pictures next week.”

Abiteboul’s comments may be pretty blunt, but they speak a truth. Launches are never about the reveal of the car’s specification that will race in the opening grand prix, and will always be a compromise of where things truly stand.

But that makes it even more essential that there is an understanding between team and fans about what is expected on the day. And total honesty about what is on show has to rise above everything else.

It is important that teams are honest with fans about what they are displaying on their launch

Photo by: Haas F1 Team