Once again, the change is predominantly on the sidepod – although apparently, Smirnoff’s name will only appear there for certain races – and it means that the large orange block that previously carried Sahara branding is now entirely black. I’m a little bit torn on this, to be honest – the car looks pretty cool the way it’s now almost all in black (with just a few flashes of orange, white and green) and it calls to mind an early ’90s car even more now than before. But on the other hand, I really liked the orange sidepods, and it’s an under-used colour in F1 generally that previously served to give Force India a nice bit of identity. Also, the new design still doesn’t solve the biggest problem on the car, which is that ghastly and out-of-place Claro logo.

I suspect that if the team had launched with the car like this, I’d like it more – I’m just not sure it was an improvement on what was there previously. But it’s always nice to see new major sponsors coming in (whatever you might think about whether alcohol branding really mixes with motorsport), and indeed it’s hard not to see this as a reaction by Smirnoff (although their drinks are different) to the prominence Martini have been afforded by their Williams linkup.

As per usual, then, let’s go through one by one and rate the cars! I’m using a new scoring system (again) this year – rather than totting up points based on individual categories, I’m just giving a simple grade from A+ down to D-. I’ve yet to work out the exchange rate of these grades against last year’s scores out of 20, but feel free to try and figure it out yourselves…

All car artwork by and copyright Andy Blackmore Design. Used with permission. These images are part of the Unofficial 2014 F1 Spotter Guide, which you should go and download and enjoy because it’s excellent.

Infiniti Red Bull Racing

The purple has a less “spray-painty” feel to it this year, which is good, although it still feels like one busy element too many. They might as well just drop the blue and make the car full-on purple, to be honest. Anyway, this is what a Red Bull looks like, and we’re all pretty used to it by now.

Grade: B-

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team

For as many of the elements from last year that this improves, there are others that it… uh… deproves? I like the new effect on the sidepod’s turquoise patch – like Red Bull, the spray paint motif is thankfully gone – but I’m not sure about the black areas on the engine cover. And I really miss the white circle surrounding the race numbers on the nose. Still, though, the Mercedes once again looks great on track.

Grade: A-

Scuderia Ferrari

The increased amount of black on the car is interesting this year, as it seems to have been done for bodywork-hiding reasons rather than aesthetic reasons. It does imbalance the car slightly, though – making the front wing, endplates and all, black would – I think – have a much stronger effect. But I like this, especially that Italian flag motif along the side – it’s only that bloody UPS logo that looks horrendously out of place once again.

Grade: B

Lotus F1 Team

Adding red to the black and gold looks good on a can of Sure For Men (in fact I’ve got one of those by the side of my bed right now), but I still just don’t understand the logic of making a big deal out of the JPS throwback livery, and then gradually adding all this clashing red so that it no longer resembles it at all. If Lotus have all these sponsors that insist on being on red backgrounds, why not go back to the red, white and blue Toleman livery or something? They just about got away with it last year, but I think this time around they’ve passed a tipping point.

Grade: D+

McLaren Mercedes

If they were sticking with the launch livery all season, we’d be mightily annoyed – it’s got no imagination, no sponsors, it’s not orange, and it’s far too easily confused with the Mercedes. The special “one-off” Mobil livery for Melbourne is a marked improvement, simply by virtue of having something to break up the lines, and the hope is that the basic design will carry on for the rest of the season with the addition of an actual title sponsor.

Grade: D if they’re using the launch livery all season, B- if they stick with the black bits.

Sahara Force India F1 Team

Force India didn’t have a bad livery before, but it’s nice to see they’ve got a willingness to change things up. This is kind of a mess, but it’s a mess in a “mid ’90s Minardi” kind of a way, i.e. a way that I like. There are some odd design choices – I think the whole nose should be black rather than have such a large white area, and the Claro logo is as incongruous and ugly as Ferrari’s UPS – but this is an enjoyable livery beyond much in the way of reasonable sense.

Grade: The objective head says C, the 90s-F1-loving-heart says B

Sauber F1 Team

I don’t really like this livery all that much – it’s grey, and it’s dull – but it continues to get goodwill by simple virtue of not being the 2011 or 2012 Sauber livery. I just wish they’d make it full-on black, though.

Grade: C

Scuderia Toro Rosso

It’s a Toro Rosso. It’s better without the gold bits that had crept onto it in recent years. It’s basically kind of what the Red Bull should look like. Yes.

Grade: B

Williams Martini Racing

Just delightful. Yes, it could have more sponsors on it. And yes, they could have made even more of a big deal out of the Martini branding. But come on, this is just a great-looking racing car. It’s not quite sex on wheels – if a team like Red Bull had Martini as a sponsor you suspect it’d be even more dramatic – but it’s the best “new” F1 livery since 2010, no question.

Grade: A

Marussia F1 Team

This is as back-of-the-grid as a livery gets, really – it’s not ugly, but it’s got no sponsors, and some detailing on the nose and wing endplates aside is barely distinguishable from last season. To be fair to it, that new nose styling is quite nice, but this otherwise feels like it’s lacking in imagination.

Grade: C+

Caterham F1 Team

I rather like the metallic green, and it was sensible of them to ditch the silver sponsor logos after all – but I still don’t understand that baffling fluorescent strip. I’m also not sure that all-over green looks as good as it would with contrasting wing plates – say in black, or even dark grey. I love a green F1 car, as you know, but the best ones – Jordan ’91, Jaguar 2000, etc. – had something to break it up a bit. As with all the liveries Caterham have had since they stopped being Lotus, the “this is quite nice” is balanced out by “but they could also have made it so much nicer”.

Grade: B+

So that’s our 2014 grid, with Williams the clear stand-out – although even that shows room for improvement. On the flipside, though, there’s also no car that stands out as being notably the worst-looking, with the possible exception of the Lotus (and even then I suspect we’ll get used to it, as we did with the previous ones). Perhaps the most disappointing cars are the ones that don’t look awful, but also don’t show much in the way of imagination – and despite Williams’ Martini deal, there’s still a worrying dearth of major sponsors around the place. It’s definitely an improvement on 2013, though – so let’s just hope that upward trend continues next year…

And then no, it turns out that it’s a “special” one-off livery for Melbourne to commemorate twenty years of their partnership with Mobil 1. Well, booooo. I do find something quite amusing, mind, about the fact that they’re commemorating the Mobil 1 partnership and not the Mercedes-Benz one, which started at the same time.

Still, it’s a better livery than the all-over silver – primarily because it doesn’t look quite so similar to the Mercedes – and if they keep the basic design while replacing Mobil 1 with a proper title sponsor in future races, we’ll be reasonably happy. But just like they disappointed us by hinting that they might run an orange car and then not doing so, once again they’ve threatened to be far more exciting before reminding us that no, they’re still McLaren.

Happily, despite being the “officially” unveiled car, it looks like this livery won’t be the one that takes to the track in Australia – as the team have now updated their Facebook page with an image of a third design. We’ll examine this in more detail when we’re given a closer look, but it appears that the amount of white (or possibly silver, it’s hard to tell from this distance) on the monocoque and nose has been increased, while there’s now a third shade of accenting green involved. And, perhaps most notably, the… uh… protuberance on the nose has now been painted black, to make it look less obvious. Although all that really serves to do is make the car look like it has a really, really short nose.

It’s a shame that Caterham have been so indecisive in their livery design, however – they came into the sport with one of the best-looking cars in many a long year, but it’s been gradually downhill since then. A green car shouldn’t be hard to get right, and some combination of the best bits of the two testing liveries should really serve them fine. The third design, however, is starting to look worryingly like a GP2 car – which, by all accounts, might actually be their performance level this year…

Okay, so this isn’t as good as some of the mockups that have been kicking around – but it was probably never going to be. It’s also a heck of a sight better than that faked photoshop that was purported a few weeks back, so that’s something.

 

Certainly, in another year that’s been less-than-vintage livery-wise, this is the outstanding contender by a country margin. And if pre-season testing is right and it goes like the clappers on the track, too, then that’ll be even better.

An intriguing tweet from journo Will Buxton, meanwhile, suggests it won’t be the only livery the team use this year, either:

Williams will have three or more separate liveries this season. Martini lines considered part of brand, so livery will change per country.

— The Buxton Blog (@thebuxtonblog) March 6, 2014

Let’s just hope they do something more imaginative in the alcohol-dry countries than simply taking the stripes off, though…

So the rumours have been gathering pace (to the extent that Autosport have run a story that all but confirms it) that Martini are indeed going to be title sponsors of the Williams team this season… and it’s something that seems to be making F1 fans everywhere very happy. Let’s face it, even those people (fools as they are) who don’t obsessively care about liveries love it when a classic design of yesteryear makes a comeback – a fact that both Lotus teams were keen to exploit when trying to be the first to successfully launch a reprise of the black-and-gold John Player Special.

When it comes to Martini, there have actually been a number of different main colour schemes that have been based around the Italian drinks company’s famous coloured stripes. The one that most people have zeroed in on is a predominantly white car, with the blue and red stripes across it – this is actually a colour scheme that’s been most commonly seen in sportscar and rally racing, although it was used by Brabham in their first year with Martini in 1975.

 

As some fan mockups have shown, the Martini branding would look quite good on Williams’ existing shade of blue, but an apparent leak of an image of team merchandise would seem to confirm that the cars will indeed be predominantly white:

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of such a classic livery has brought the best out of those who like to design mockup cars, and it’s safe to say that if the Williams looks anything like any of these, it’s sure to be a corker:

by VirtualCar.IT

by Fillipe Design

by Fillipe Design

by Istvan Kalmar

by Cdeb Design

by Cdeb Design

by Vert

However it ends up looking when it’s finally launched, it’s safe to say that if this linkup is genuine, then Williams have put some much-needed life into current F1 livery discussion. We can only hope that McLaren are paying close attention when considering how to dress their Honda-powered cars in 2015…

Red Bull

Perhaps the most interesting element of the liveries this year is how the various teams have chosen to try and mask the appallingly ugly front ends with a carefully-applied paint job. Some, like McLaren, haven’t bothered in the slightest – but Red Bull and sister team Toro Rosso have both decided to paint out the very tip, in the hope that at speed and a fair distance, the car will look more aesthetically pleasing.

Aside from that, it’s pretty much business as usual for Red Bull, with just a few tweaks to the Infinity scheme of last year. The purple paint looks a bit less messily applied this time out, and former Williams title sponsor AT&T also join the team with a tiny decal on the sidepod.

Toro Rosso

Similarly, there’s little in the way of changes on the STR – Falcon Private Bank have gone, so the front wing endplate has gone blue instead of gold, and there’s a little bit of a red and gold swoosh on the side of the nose cone (not entirely dissimilar to Lotus, as it goes), but otherwise, this is an STR that looks exactly as you’d expect an STR to. Despite being a bit sick of that painted bull, I still quite like this car.

Mercedes

 

The biggest change, though, is the black area on the engine cover. I’m not entirely sure what the reason for it is, but it works quite well – although like the turquoise bits, it feels like there’s not quite enough of it to impose its presence. Nevertheless, this is probably the best-looking car on the 2014 grid so far.

Ferrari

No major changes for Ferrari – and let’s just ignore the vaccum-cleaner nose altogether, shall we? – with the only real difference from last year being that the black section now sweeps up over the exhaust and rear engine cover. I actually quite like increasing the amount of black on the car, although it’s unusual for modern-era Ferrari – but I think it’d look even better if the wings were black, too. Then again, as a fan of late 80s/early 90s Ferraris, I would say that…

Lotus

What I really like, though, are the red/gold stripes on the side of the nose – it’s about the only place where the two colours are used harmoniously together, and it’s only a shame that motif doesn’t spread to the rest of the car, as it’s a distinctive look.

Sauber

I can’t see any changes on this from last year’s, except for Telcel no longer being on the rear wing endplate. So far, so Sauber.

Force India

So that’s now eight out of the ten teams who’ve revealed their liveries (although I’m still expecting McLaren will unveil a tweaked version with a new title sponsor before the season kicks off… I say “expecting”, I mean “hoping”), with just Caterham and Williams to come. Once again, it’s been a bit of an anti-climactic year so far for new designs, but kudos to Force India and Mercedes for trying to keep things a bit interesting…

The bold new direction exactly the same direction as before only with most of the interesting bits removed was further enhanced by being emblazoned with the team’s new title sponsor barely any sponsorship logos whatsoever. It’s also pleasing annoying that the team have finally decided to set their car apart from that of Mercedes continue to have their car look exactly the bloody same as the Mercedes.

The orange silver car is also an uncharacteristic move exactly what you would have expected now that Ron “Interesting” Dennis is back in charge of the team. We can’t wait to see await with resigned boredom how the car will change further look exactly the same once the Honda era begins in 2015.

And not only have they surprised us with the timing of it, but they’ve surprised us by having a completely new livery as well. Which is even better, because it actually gives us something to talk about.

I sort of have an unofficial rule when it comes to Whether A Livery’s Any Good Or Not, which is that if it has FOUR main colours on it, it’s probably bad. But actually, you know, I think this one manages to swerve that problem – it’s certainly no 2007 Renault – perhaps partly because two of the colours are black and white, so they don’t really count.

Black as a new primary colour is undoubtedly a plus point – it’s pretty much impossible for an F1 car to look bad if it’s predominantly black – and it’s a much better base for the array of sponsors. The Kingfisher and Royal Challenge logos look significantly cleaner in white-on-black rather than being in their original colours – although it’s a shame that the Claro logo, brought to the team by new arrival Sergio Perez, breaks that trend and so comes off as a bit clashy. It would surely look a bit better on one of the white areas, on which there are a couple of other sponsor colours leaping out – although in truth, I think a bolder step of taking away the white altogether could have made this even smarter.

In general, though, it looks great, with the black proving a much better way of pulling the team’s green-and-orange identity together than the old white was. There’s actually something of an early-mid-90s look about it (think Minardi, Fondmetal, Larrousse etc.) – and to my eyes, that’s no bad thing. Indeed, it’s quite possibly the best livery this team has had since it was Jordan…