P1 with Matt and Tommy - Our reaction to the Alpine F1 car launch

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

We struggled through another 3-hour conference before getting a first look at Alpine's new livery - and we got two different options! And both of them were... terrible!Are F1 missing the bigger picture here? Subscribe to our brand new channel, 'Wheel Knowledge' right here!You can sign up to our Patreon here! You'll get access to exclusive episodes you won't hear anywhere else, every P1 episode ad-free, full driver interview videos, early access to tickets and more!Follow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the P-E-1 podcast with Matt and Tommy. And although I sung jovially at the beginning of this podcast, we need to get down to business, Tom Bellingham, because... And I feel slightly sorry for Alpine because I feel like this is the straw that breaks the camels back as opposed to Alpine themselves. But it's time to talk about their car launch and where Formula One is going in general with colours. Yes, I am currently working. away on the new P1 logos of getting rid of all the purple and it's going to be carbon fibre from now on. We laugh and otherwise we would cry because of course if you haven't seen the Alpine has launched

today and they launched two cars, didn't they Tommy? They launched the first car in their main really colourful conference and, oh wait, no, it was a standard Alpine car launch that we're we're very used to, which is half an hour of just chatting to the vice president of Alpine and then bringing up another man that we've never seen before from Alpine. With his arms folded. Yeah, with his arms folded throughout the whole thing, which was really grinding my gears. But then, of course, they launched the WEC car, which we thought, oh, that's quite lovely, actually. They're allowed to be the...

Yeah, they don't care about how quick that goes. They just wanted to look good. Then they flipped to the first Formula One car, which we thought was the only one, but it wasn't. there was two, and they pulled back the old cover, didn't they? And then my first... Oh, God. My first reaction was, have they forgotten to paint it? It literally looked like a paint-by-numbers thing that you've done,

but you've only done 10% of it. And you've just left a lot of the one... Because I can't be bothered to get another colour out. It was surprising. What were they doing? Yeah. There's no... There's no colour.

It's painful. Like, this is a team. this is a team that in 2021, well we see that livery on the WEC car, it looks banging, like that kind of shiny blue that they've got going with the French trickler. We absolutely loved that when they released it in 2021. Of course, they used to be Renault as well, which is this really identifiable, like bright yellow. They've got BWT, which are like the sponsor in Formula One that like to have bright pink, and it be crazy.

and we know them for that. And when they took that cover off and I saw that the nose was mainly carbon, it was like, it was a shock because you just think, well, surely not everything. It generally makes me worried, like even Ferrari might do this.

No, no, no, Tommy, don't. I know they can't. But you say that Alpine was the straw that broke the camel's back. Like, I think if Ferrar, Ferrari revealed a carbon car and they just say, and it's a proper like, well, this is what we have to do now, that would force them to do something. But yeah, the Alpine launch, yeah, it's so disappointing because it's a team that have such a vibrant colour and they've not really used much of it. you use the Ferrari example.

I think that that's one where I genuinely believe Ferrari are so proud with their own brand and their own colours that they would rather be slow and have a bit of carbon like we saw the little box which I didn't particularly like on the car that just kind of stood out.

Yeah, but I just feel like they're going to go no, screw that, we're going for colour and it's red shock. But anyway, back to Alpine. So not only do they release one car that we were, underwhelmed to say the least about. They then were like, oh, we've got another car.

And everyone sits up. Okay. All right. We're going to get the pink car. And then they slowly unveil that one, and it looked almost exactly the same as the first car with a few more pink accents on it. How did they think?

Oh, yeah, they're not going to be too happy the fans with the first one. Let's release, let's unveil the second one as if it's like so much more. vibrant, but it wasn't. I think that's what made a mockery of it because there's so little paint on it and you can't blame the designers and the people that have done this.

I'm sure they are equally as frustrated as Formula One fans because they will be Formula One fans as well themselves that want to make a really cool livery, really something vibrant. They've got an amazing colour palette to work with and Alpine car like the people making the car have gone

so you're allowed to paint this bit and they've gone oh you can just imagine the conversation like they sit down and you know the budding livery design is like right I've got so many ideas I've concepted this one I've concepted this one and they go look we love them that's great we can paint 12% of the car yeah oh is it 12% is it even that yeah it is so annoying because

and I think yeah the second livery is what made it even more of a bit of a mockery like maybe maybe that is even I doubt it but you're sending a message they're sending a message it's a help message it is a help of like because as well they teased this whole pink camo car so I expected that was going to be that or yeah or what they'd do is they'd be like well look we all have to run this one in the race because it needs to we need to weight save. It's all about performance. Formula one teams are never going to sacrifice performance.

So maybe it's like, well, in testing, we know we'll be 0.000001 faster, but we'll paint it just so it looks cool on track, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, like you say, they've just replaced a few of the blue diagonals with the pink diagonals, but there's not enough color on the car for it to look noticeably different. So it just almost was a bit laughable to be like to hype us up again going,

oh wait, there's a pink one. No, there is. 5% of it's pink, but it's a pink one. So this was a kind of a fans' overall feeling as well. We did a poll on Twitch and I think about 85% voted it either sort of one to four out of 10. So a lot of distaste to this particular decision. And the question that you've kind of brought up, but also Haley, 58181-2-2-3 comes in with is where TF is the pink camo.

And the only way I can think of this from a brand perspective is that they would not have teased that pink camo livery if they weren't going to have a pink camo car. So I think at the very last second, someone's made a decision and gone, no, no, no, no, we have to change it. We have to change it. Let's just do a few more pink little diagonal things, as you say, on the car. And we'll just have to do that because we need as accurate. at data as possible, or whatever the decision might have been,

because that's just going to anger Alpine fans, isn't it? All three of them. To tease, I was going to say that, Tommy. But then I thought, no, they're going to get enough criticism as it is. And Tommy's gone and straight up done a sucker punch. Sorry, Alpine. I didn't say that. But yeah, in terms of just, why would you do that?

There is no benefit apart from getting social chatter, but then that social chatter is going to turn to a negative when you don't release it. Yeah, and I don't think it is. I think it is literally just a way because they know that they need some eyeballs on the social media post. Yeah, yeah, because what are they going to do?

What are they going to do to like, oh, here's a teaser of our car and every team's done the same thing where it's like here's a carbon fibre front wing. It's like not going to it's just not going to interest anyone. But it did. I think there's so many things here

that have made it like you say the straw that broke the camel's back because of basically being like the whole thing like we've seen a lot of carbon already then the whole launch and it's not Alpine's fault but the whole launch did make a mock of it the fact that it's like

here's a car from a different series look how cool it looks right now here's the F1 car there's no paint on it but wait here's another one it looks the same because we can't paint that one either And that's what's so frustrating. And we will disagree on this, but I actually think it's a cool looking car. I think if it was a standalone car, the pink one, I think looks really cool.

It's like a cool testing livery, like black and pink. I don't want, I hate everything it stands for, but I actually like the livery as a standalone thing. But I'll still be giving it like probably a one out of ten just because I'm so annoyed. It's funny because I think when Mercedes came out with their all-carbon car last year, I was like, damn, that looks sick. And now, because I've seen 20 of them, I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm not a fan of this anymore. So yeah, I'm blinded by rage. But I'm sure, you know, in 10 years' time I'll be able to look back and go,

wow, that was a great-looking car on its own with no other car around it that's also black and carbon. Question from Pfizer-Car 1-2-3BS. How screwed are they if they have so few painted parts on livery launch? I'm not sure. I mean, maybe, because you would think that, you know, it being a livery launch, and we have seen Williams, for example, showcase a car that has a lot more painted bits than what they actually roll out after testing. So it's probably not the best outlook for Alpine,

because I'm sure they don't actively want to have that much carbon within their car to try and for Brad identity and stuff like that. So the simulations might not be the most positive things they've ever seen, hence why they've gone for this. But, you know, these are incremental advantages by not painting the car. This isn't half a second the lap or anything like that. So, yeah, you know, we can predict all we want. Alpine will probably win the world championship if we say they're screwed.

But it's not the most positive of outlooks. No, I mean, this is the thing. I joked on the Twitch stream that, you know, this is going to catapult them from six in the championship to six in the championship with maybe two extra points throughout a 24 race season. Now, they'll be behind V-Carb now, man. Yeah, maybe. But teams will always take this.

And it is probably extremely frustrating for the teams, because like you say, they won, you know, Alpine came into Formula One. they took over Renault, which was, you know, they had the yellow of Renault. And when they launched in 2021, it was like, this is Alpine and they want to promote the fact that it's like, these are our brand colours. We've got the French Shricolor on it. And they never, no team ever will be able to do this. But like people want to have their own identity like Ferrari where it's kind of like, this is our colour scheme. and we're kind of establishing something,

but they can't do that anymore because of the way that they're having these carbon cars because they need to weight save so much. And it's just sad reality of how it's going. But I don't, you do wonder if they will take any more off. There's not really a lot to take off anymore. Maybe it's just a case of teams now going well. We're not even going to pretend that we're going to paint

to like, because it's not going to look like this in the first race in Bahrain or after testing. You know, steak will probably get rid of their green front wing and rear wing and stuff like that and McLaren will start shaving bits off and until they step in and do something, it's not going to, it's going to just be that way. And my thoughts on this whole non-painting debacle that we currently have in Formula One, I think it does genuinely have an impact. later down the line when you look back at these kind of images of Formula One on the grid and all these different cars that aren't, you know, don't have these really distinctive liveries.

Because I'm thinking, you know, for more maybe even the children that watch, the kids, the ones that are growing up. And I always used to be so infatuated by Ferrari Red. And I was like, wow, what an amazing car. And then you kind of get sucked into that whole, I don't know, the idea of it and everything like that. If you're a kid watching now, you're just, you're seeing the same. car pretty much up and down the grid.

If everyone just wore a black shirt. Like it's your colours. It's like your sporting colours is like of who you support. Like yeah, like if I go back to being a kid, I supported orange arrows literally just because I like the livery because it was bright orange. It looked really cool. And I was like, yeah, I'll support them because it looks nice. And loads of people will do that.

They're like, you know, Jaguar were like, oh, we'll be British Racing Green and all this kind stuff that gives a team and identity and and like you say like these sports teams are you're going to lose that like look at silverstone you want like people in papaya caps people in red caps people in blue caps like it's part of the sport to have like some vibrancy and like team colors and we're losing it because for whatever reason they're not they're not like some. Like some Something has to change now because... We know the reason. They're trying to save time on the tracks.

So literally, all they need to do to fix this is put something in the regulations where they have to paint X amount of part of the car. Maybe even be 100%. I don't know. And people will say that's ridiculous, but they have done things like that before. Like, do you remember when on the shark fin, they realized that numbers on the cars are getting too small? and they're like you have to have a certain part of the car

and there is literally a rule that you have to have eligible numbers on a car because if you throw back to 20 years ago and you look at a Formula One car you can't even see the numbers on it whereas now they are actually quite vibrant and big and you can see the numbers on the car so they have the ability to do this it's not like it's an impossible thing they can write in regulations

you have to paint this. It can't just be carbon fibre. We know you want to wait to say. And it's not ridiculous either. It's not ridiculous. Like, why would mandating something like this be ridiculous? Formula One have to think about this from, you know, a bigger picture here than just, oh, you know, the identities, you know, they're stripping back a little bit.

There is, I don't see there's any drawbacks in mandating something like that to make sure that brand identity. Because it makes sense for the teams as well. The teams are only doing it to save time on track. They're not doing it because they think it looks good. so commercial like formula one's becoming so commercial like i've just started watching the nascar documentary on on netflix and they do it so right where like every car insanely bright colored like massive sponsors on it like that all the cars are really like identifiable and if you're like a sponsor or like yeah like alpine or bwt or whatever and you're

paying like millions of pounds to be on a formula one car and you've just got a plain white leg on it and you can't actually put your brand identity on it, there'll be a certain number of people that are just going, like, this is such a ridiculous conversation to have, but it's not like, it is taking some of the soul out of Formula One, because like, I tweeted a picture recently of the grid from 2018, and it is alarming to look at how good it was, like red Ferrari, blue Toro-Rosso, Yellow Renault, Orange McLaren, Pink Racing Point, like, the cars stood out and you and when you're like trying to get into a sport like you say like kids and stuff

you want to be like I know what that car is I know what that car is and you can learn because if you're just watching a sport where like every car looks the same I mean RIP Crofty this year because it's going to be impossible it certainly is so it's not just about the sponsors that are in Formula One as well

but also the potential sponsors for ones that might want to join Formula One then they look at the grid and go well how the hell are we going to stay? stand out. And there's just so many drawbacks to this that I don't think maybe, for whatever reason, it's, you know, Formula One, FIA, whatever. Why are they not working together to just fix this and put it in the rules and then it's done and dusted and we can have a colorful grid again? It's very, very strange. TIEC underscore 46. Are we starting to experience how our

grandparents watched F1 in black and white? That's a good one. Yes. Yeah. It's not that far yet. But if you're let Formula One teams try and do well without any sort of repercussions or things in the rules, then they will go as far as necessary to try and win, even if it means not being able to be recognised on the grid. I think Formula E had a problem with that a few years ago as well, didn't they, with all cars being black and red or something, or I can't remember. Yeah, like, this is the problem with manufacturers, they all, they're all normally black, white and red, but you have all these sponsors that are willing to do something crazy.

like BWT and stuff. But instead it's like, no, here's like half a litre bottle of pink paint. That's all you're allowed to make your brand stand out. It's just, yeah, it is taking a lot of the soul out of it. And when we look, like obviously we'll be so excited that we will forget about it when the lights go out. but you look at a picture of a Formula One grid when we do lights out in Bahrain

and compare it to a few years ago, yeah, you've lost like a lot of the vibrancy and sporting colours of the sport and that's a really big shame. Yeah, we're not debating whether we like racing or not. Racing is racing, right? We love the racing. This is another part to the sport

that we think needs to change and needs to improve and some people will think that we're being over the top or whatever, but I genuinely don't think so, and I think that this is a problem. And if you just look at social media, it is a almost a worldwide feeling. It's not like this is a off the cuff, a little bit saucy this opinion, isn't it?

You know, the way it is a genuine, general fan opinion. But yes, I think we could go on about this for another three hours, if possible, which would actually be longer than the Alpine car launch. So Tommy, I think we'll end it there. What are your final thoughts and try to keep them under 25 minutes? yeah Frank's gone absolutely nuts so he's just I think he's just seen the albee livery

he's not happy uh dogs actually can't see in much much color so we're all experiencing formula one through a dog's eyes anyway at the moment um and yeah just annoying because livery season is uh is exciting um i sound like a boomer but yeah like growing up in the 90s and being excited to see what the cars look like and what they're going to look like. And this is a shame to see that. And it's no like sorry Alpin is what I'll probably say as a final thought. It's like it's not your fault. It's Formula One's fault. You're all like Formula One teams are always going to find a way to do this. But it's a shame for them because we know how good they can do liveries. exactly you know how excited we were when we saw the pink one even the blue one looked amazing when

they first launched it and i think yeah it is it is a sorry alpine for popping off it isn't just you i think your livery took it to the extreme in terms of like stripping it back to carbon and that's why we've we've popped off now is because we've seen a few and this has gone too far in our opinions so yes alpine we do still love you would love to speak to estabana alcon on piagas at some point this year. We just want your car to look better. And I think you probably do too. I bet they do. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So lots of love, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. My other final thought is that P1 live show tickets are going on sale on Friday. They are live now if you are a Patreon. So you can go to either Cambridge, Bath or London and get your tickets early.

If not, the wholesale opens up on Friday. So look forward to that and we'll see you very soon. Lots of love. Bye. Bye. Make sure you follow us on all of our socials. We're Matt P1 Tommy on Twitter, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram. You can also sign up to our Patreon at the link in the episode notes for ad-free episodes, full video interviews and extra bonus episodes for as little as $5 a month. Finally, make sure you're following us on Spotify. See you soon.

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