F1: Mclaren, Lotus and Ferrari 2014 Cars Revealed
By Adam Johnson
credit: McLaren
What on earth were the FIA thinking when their new regulations were drawn up that forced teams into ridiculously phallic nose designs?
Frankly, who nose?
Sorry, you knew that joke had to come somewhere.
But to be honest, it’s hard to take the 2014 F1 contenders seriously. And we can thank our old friend politics for why this season’s contenders have noses that can’t be shown before the watershed. The FIA have slowly been tightening the rules on front nose dimensions for several seasons now, trying to make them lower for ‘safety’ reasons – what safety reasons, you ask? Again, who nose. If anything, lower noses are more likely to slide underneath another car in a crash, lifting them up.
With the teams refusing to budge and trying to do what they are paid to do, i.e. extract the most amount of performance from a design spec, we end up in this utterly ludicrous scenario. I feel sorry for the various PR representitives for each team; how on Earth are you supposed to spin these horrible cars as anything other than a joke that makes F1 a laughing stock? Have you noticed how most of the promo pictures of the new cars have been side-on, with the front wheels obscuring the nosecones? There’s a good reason for that.
McLaren at least could distract fans with news that Lotus team principal Eric Boullier had defected to join them, but still, one look at their MP4-29 leaves you reaching for the sick bucket. It’s awful, and an insult to the many great previous McLaren designs that flank it in the promo photos. It’s an affront to years of great design and innovation in F1.
Credit: Lotus
Lotus boldly claimed that their car would not look like an anteater, making jokes about it on their Twitter page minutes before the unveil. Great, so instead of a man’s private parts, we have a car with a nose which…looks like a woman’s private parts. I dread to think what happens if the E22 spins out in front of the MP4-29 and ends up having a head-on crash…congratulations, F1, you’ve given birth to a McLotus. Certainly it won’t be shown on TV before the watershed.
So then speculation mounted about what on Earth the Ferrari F14-T would look like. I even joked that it might look like Noo-Noo, the robotic vacuum cleaner from the kids’ TV show Tellytubbies.
And you know what? I wasn’t far off.
Credit: Ferrari
The very least you can say about it is that at least they’ve tried to innovate, which is after all what F1 is all about. And it doesn’t need censor blurring on TV. And that it’ll be useful for hoovering up any leaves on the track during races, if needed. It’s certainly the prettiest of the 2014 contenders thus far, but that’s not saying much; it’s like saying a Toyota Prius is the fastest when its opponents were the Flintstones car and a tortoise. Perhaps ‘least offensive to my eyes’ is the best way to describe it.
So we’re 4 cars down into 2014 (including the already released Williams FW36), and what do we have? Two penises, a lady’s privates and a leaf blower. Either way, 2014 is proving to be the moment where F1 jumps the shark. F1 was built on raw power, sonic assaults on the senses – including looks, no matter what the PR men claim: ‘it doesn’t matter how it looks, it’s built to win’. It was built on integrity, cars that looks achingly beautiful (or at the very least, boldly innovative) and made noises that sent electric shocks up your spine and gripped the senses, and drivers willing to fight tooth and nail to the last lap of the last race of every season. Not tool around at 75% in stupid ‘anteater’ cars constrained by over-regulation waiting for a farcical points gimmick to give them the title by pure luck.
Credit: ESPN F1
When I first saw an F1 car in the mid-1990s, I thought ‘WOW!’ and promptly plastered pictures of V10 Ferraris and Williams and Jordans all over my bedroom wall. Put a poster of the 2014 McLaren on your wall, and expect to get laughed out of town. 2014 will go down in history as the moment F1’s leaders lost touch with its fans.
When will they reconnect?
Who nose?