NedaSay

Yup it happened, and I believe Lotus have been aware of it for a while. Alpine is at the crossroads in terms of strategy while Lotus has a clear plan for now. Dieppe factory is still at the heart of alpine sports car strategy as is Hethel for Lotus. Sharing the chassis of more properly said using the Type 135 chassis would have saved Alpine cost but also negated the need for Dieppe as both cars production would have been more cost effective sharing one production line. Besides brexit still has an impact on business decision, and Alpine is going to try to hammer the haute couture / made in France message down in the next few years. I don't believe it changes any thing for Lotus they heavy lifting for type 135 has been done already under project LEVA. Now they are in tooling, production engineering and procurement mode for the "Elise" class model. they have everything available in house or in the group as the footprint growth of the group is almost hard to fathom. Beside with Geely now a 17% shareholder in Aston Martin, I do think project LEVA architecture will find a suitable buyer sooner than later.

It does make sense from the Renault Group perspective, especially with the need for them to build the car in Dieppe.

Fresh of the Youtube Canadian review:

Interesting.

I could see Honda teaming up with a team like Williams. It appears Honda new boss is keen on staying and they never stopped developing the engine, they must have kept some of the IP on their engine, they haven't disarmed Sakura so if they are keen on continuing their involvement, they will need an independant team and Williams is the one independent team in F1 until the foreseable sale of Alpha Tauri. I don't see Haas leaving the Ferrari fold, and for the same reason I do not see Aston Martin leaving the Mercedes Fold. However it has been hinted that McLaren could also jump ship to Honda which would be ironic and poetic considering the two entities recent and storied past

So they were testing at Volvo not so secret testing grounds, we must be very close to unveil, this is were they shot a few not so secret pictures for the Eletre unveil... a test car finding its way on a flatbed... looks fairly logic to me. On a different note, these wheels are epic.

The only thing until the perfect electric grand tourer is that it will require the perfect electric recharging network, looking at things from my perspective we are very far from it. Hopefully it gets better but the fact that charging network are not managed by big petco selling you their stuff is not quite helping i think. Tesla has by far the best network at the time being, by best i mean it is the most dense, cohesive and reliable.

less paint = less weight Last launch this year is Alpine And the anglo-french team will again have two liveries to play with this year the one above Blue, black and pink and the predominantly pink

One advantage of Taycan over Eletre is that Taycan is out and about and proven, but also and mostly Taycan comes as an awesome fast estate car. I really hope Type 133 will spawn a fast estate car cause they are awesome. People are under the spell that they should get SUV, cause they are safer, you see the road better, blah blah blah. Most SUV are not great to drive, and guzzle gas more than a station wagon would. Of course, with an EV, that last criteria is null and void, and the SUV form factor hides and protect the battery better, but I still dig a regular height car and I live in the land of the snow.

Today's mercedes turn to present their car and here it is. after they annus horribilis last year, the team decided to go back to black and a livery similar to the ones they used when LH won is 7th title. The surprise is that they are sticking to the size 0 sidepod aero concept that proved so difficult to master last year. It is not as extreme maybe with slightly more pronounced curves but still the vertical air intakes. the car looks slick. But gosh is it me or the grid is going a bit dark this year. after 2 years in white Haas went back to black and red, Alfa Romeo went red and black, Ferrari chose a brighter shade of red... and black, Redbull night blue is even darker than it was. Same at Alpha Tauri. and McLaren is less orange than it is black this year after their issues making the weight last year. Car should look good at night races. Las Vegas will be a big show the Netflix fans of f1 are set to see beautiful images in 2024...

SF23 from Ferrari is out and about and it is red with touches of black Still very conservative, but it does look good in my opinion, hopefully the car is fast, and if Ferrari can stop effing their strategy up, it could be a contender for a title at the end of the year. They certainly have the drivers able to deliver wins and the budget. On the budget side, Ferrari decided to bring back their name on the rear wing, which is an elegant solution that only Ferrari can have, the ghost title sponsor, Officially Philip Morris International - Mission Winnow is just a major official partner, but it is still arguably the first partner of the reds, however it won't be displayed at all on the car this year. Santander and Shell are officially the biggest Scuderia partners but if they get prime real estate on the car, and that is debatable, their treatment could be much bette,r but Ferrari is bigger than all the sponsors, and sponsors should be happy to be allowed to feature on the car even if they are barely visible on it. I guess the amount of airtime they get from being on the car and the association with the brand outweighs any of the negative, hence Bang & Olufsen switching from the struggling Williams to the gorgeous red cars. and AWS agrees to pay a reported $10m for the front wing inner end plates. It is good to be Ferrari.

the AMR 23 car livery is also out Aston Martin's take on british racing green with a dash of bright yellow really works for me even though this is a very conservative livery. hopefully the car is better than last year.

We get Mclaren and Aston Martin today. I did/do not expect neither team to change their livery much from last year. mclaren just unveiled their car and it looks pretty close to last year's indeed I would say I could sware this livery had been leaked in the days before the launch, or they used a fan render that got published on insta but most certainly it was just last year livery with good lighting. Orange is the new black or black is the new orange... that will save them some weight on track as they will leave the black zone bare carbon.

I think we have a very strong contender for the lamest livery of 2023. I could be wrong because we still have most teams to present their livery but this one will surely rank high in my book. Orlen became the new principle partner so they plastered a bit of red or is it very bright orange on the halo, mirrors, side skirt, and rear wing. while alpha tauri retains most of the car's body and front wing so it remains as people can see mostly blue and white as a result the red bits do look a bit like an afterthought.

The Alfa Romeo Racing x Sauber went Red on Black instead of white, still the livery is an improvement.