Red Bull Racing Reveals Title Defender

The 2012 Red Bull Racing RB8 is released this morning. Image by Red Bull Racing

This morning, Red Bull released a video of some media of their 2012 car, the RB8, to a worldwide audience.  Coming off of another championship winning season, all eyes are on the title defenders as they release their design to the world wide motorsport press.

The initial photos of the car The media is flowing out now, but so far, the released photos are in the gallery and we're studying the content to see what the Milton Keynes based team have prepared for the 2012 season.

For now, here's some beauty shots of the car for your viewing pleasure:

//UPDATE 01

The design of the 2012 RB8 car looks to be very competitive. Red Bull's chief designer Adrian Newey is known for his aerodynamic design features, creating a distinctive advantage over the rest of the field and translating into wins. Constant bending (not breaking) of the rules is an essential part of the sport, testing the cleverness of designers to solve a dynamic set of rules evolving every year. Aerodynamics are largely still a highly secretive part of the industry and kept under close guard, so design solutions aren't completely proven until they hit the track in pre-season testing.

Like other cars released last week, the new regulations on exhaust flow have allowed teams to tighten-up the rear end of the car, delivering a much tighter waist than previous years.  Additionally, the front nose of the car has also managed the 2012 height requirements by using a stepped nose (nicknamed the 'platypus nose').  The Red Bull's nose is not quite as smooth as the McLaren or Lotus, but also not quite as extreme as the Ferrari or Force India.  At this point, the effectiveness of the nose design is all still speculation, but results should be developing in the next few hours as journalists bring back the news from Jerez, Spain.  We'll keep things updated as this news begins to flow...

 

Lotus E20 Emerges

Jérôme d’Ambrosio, Romain Grosjean, Eric Boullier and Kimi Räikkönen proudly present the Lotus E20

Lotus had a rough morning today as millions of fans around the world tuned in to see the live launch of the 2012 car, dubbed the E20. But the information now emerging makes the technical difficulties seem trivial given what looks to be a very promising design with great potential for the 2012 season.

Lotus is receiving well-deserved praise from the F1 community for developing a very good looking car, and we share the sentiment. The now common platypus nose was mitigated well by the Lotus team, and the overall shape of the car is quite pleasing. We'll see how the new design translates to performance on the track beginning with testing on Tuesday in Jerez, Spain.

Backed by two championship winning drivers for 2012 - former F1 champ Kimi Räikkönen and GP2 Champ Romain Grosjean - Lotus' new driver lineup could help propel the team into a top tier finish, elevating the Lotus brand into the spotlight.  Kimi's return to the sport has drawn attention to the team as many hope to see the 'Flying Finn' back on the podium this season. The hope is for both drivers' experience to translate team synergy into points, providing serious competition across the F1 grid.

Lotus published a video on their YouTube Channel, which includes a twenty minute presentation of the launch and interviews with many of the key players in the team: Kimi Räikkönen, Romain Grosjean, reserve driver Jérôme d’Ambrosio, and team principal Eric Boullier. It offers great insight into the team's operations and a rare glimpse at the magnitude of the operations of an F1 constructor; be sure to check it out.

The website refresh is also live, including more press releases, media and fan interaction. Many of the teams are implementing more web-based and social media efforts for real time fan interaction - which we LOVE. Since Americans rely largely on the internet for our live F1 news and entertainment, we hope F1 teams continue to pursue and develop this channel for fans.

Failure to Launch

Formula 1 fans hoping to see the Lotus Renault E20 launch were met with constant bandwidth errors this morning //Update- High-Res images have been released.

This morning at 10am CST, the Lotus Renault F1 team was scheduled to launch their new E20 car in front of an internet audience around the world. With Autosport Magazine assisting with live commentary and feed, the launch was slated to rival the magnitude of McLaren's presentation, or even Monday's scheduled Red Bull Racing Launch, both via live web-feed.

However, fans were greeted with empty promises and 504 BAD GATEWAY errors as the website intended to host the stream went dead. Now 30 minutes later, the only available video is a guerrilla marketing piece clearly produced over the last few weeks, highlighting Kimi's return to the sport.

So far, the only photos released are on Lotus Renault's Facebook page, but still, in very limited quanitity. 

With the first launch scheduled at a time when both Asia, Europe, and the Americas could reasonably view the presentation, we were excited about the launch and anticipated that Lotus would capitalize on their truly global audience. Unfortunately, the result might be a much more sobering reality; that their fans expect a team to deliver a live feed with one of the largest racing publications when they say so, otherwise fans are left with a sour taste in their mouths.

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