Renault with a Russian and new colours

Renault have now launched their car and announced the driver to partner Robert Kubica. Vitaly Petrov will pilot the second Renault for 2010, he makes history as the first Russian to enter F1, no mention of the money he could bring though.
The new Renault doesn’t look as sharp as the McLaren or the Ferrari but the 2005/6 cars didn’t either and look what they did. I love the new colour scheme though it does remind me somewhat of Eddie Jordan’s team. It will look good on track, and if their design team has managed to stay insulated from all the happenings at the team over the past 12 months they might produce something – I guess we’ll have to wait until Bahrain to see if they have managed it.
Vitaly Petrov seems an odd choice as the second driver but I guess they couldn’t have done worse than Romain Grosjean. He [...]

New Boys

The 2010 season sees four new teams appear on the grid, along with the return of Peter Sauber who takes back the BMW team. Indeed the manufacturer defection goes even further as Renault have sold a large chunk to an investment firm, with only Mercedes coming into F1 we’re looking at a season full of independent teams. The Final list for 2010 is:

Mercedes
Red Bull
McLaren
Ferrari
Sauber
Williams
Renault
Force India F1
Toro Rosso
USF1*
Campos*
Virgin*
Lotus F1*

* = new team
I’ve said before that I think the old teams will have a tremendous advantage going into this year where not many of the regulations have changed, not to mention the experience of the teams at these new organisations. Presumably they have experienced staff with Toyota shutting up shop and Brawn laying off half their staff at the beginning of the year but they won’t have all been racing together before. The Mercedes and Sauber teams will also have restructuring to [...]