February Fun & F1 Livery Reviews

Good afternoon, I hope you are well.

On 31st January, 2023, Haas was the first F1 team to reveal their 2023 livery - others followed shortly after.

31/01/2023

Haas

10/10 - Cut ALL ties with everything Russian related or coloured - A good looking livery and car.

Shame Rich Energy was a shady company - because I thoroughly enjoyed Haas' gold year (2019) - but I'm loving this "back to basics, back to original colours" livery.

As we entered February, I was excited to see what the rest of the grid came up with in terms of design...

It's fair to say, the next two weeks were a little bit of a let-down - almost half the pack (5/10 teams) going for exactly the same design as previous years. This included

Red Bull (3rd Feb)

Williams (6th Feb) - Bonus point for Duracell sponsorship placement

Alpha Tauri (11th Feb) - Bonus points for red ORLEN sponsor and for doing a colour invert.

McLaren & Aston Martin (13th February) - Bonus point to McLaren for their obsessive (Google) Chrome Sponsorship. Not exactly what I meant when I said I loved their Chrome livery in the past...

Ferrari (14th Feb)

Now, I did miss one very critical team - Alfa Romeo - and that's because they did a VERY good thing...

Okay, maybe I'm hyping their livery too much - but I'll give it a solid 8.5/10 - No, they haven't done a Haas and gone for a completely new look (or classic/old look) - but they've significantly changed it up from last year - making it different (enough) from last year's car. Alfa Tauri was close - but it was the same colours, just inverted. Alfa and Haas are the only ones to do "something new" for the new year.

We have just Alpine and Mercedes to go - Mercedes has run the same "Silver Arrows" livery for 12 years - so I'm not expecting anything revolutionary.

As for Alpine? That could be a bit more open, although the remainder of the mid-field (bar two) were disappointing, so this very well could be the case as well

30th Jan - 3rd Feb

Other than the standard weekly iRacing race, few laps in the Supercar at Bathurst and watching of liveries reveals, it was a pretty uneventful week.

That weekend, EES (European Endurance Series) was at Barcelona - which is an enjoyable track for me, however I was on the mainland...doing something a little different.

~

04/02/2023 Usually, because I'm lazy, I meet up with friends at mid-day/afternoon (so I don't have to wake up ridiculously early).

Today the plan was to have a beach-day with a friend.

Because I have no self-worth, I stayed up messaging friends, before realising it was 5am and I had to get grooving to catch the first ferry of the day at 6:20am.

(Wightlink suggest arriving half-an-hour before)

The ferry eventually arrived on the mainland at about 7am-ish, and I arrived at my friend's for 9am.

We first headed down to West Wittering Beach and walked down to the water - I know it's February, but I've got to have my first beach-day.

After chilling out at the beach for less than an hour (it was calm, but cold), we next decided to visit Five Guys in Brighton - another Beach town/city.

I don't know how we planned it so well, but by the time we arrived in Brighton, it was approaching lunch time.

Initially, I was planning to park in ASDA and walk to Five Guys with my friend - but with a 2-hour limit and "customer parking" restriction - I wanted to be certain I wasn't going to be facing any fines, and parked in the multi-storey car-park literally above where I had just parked.

Finding Five Guys was a bit of a headache - Google Maps showed it as being accessible from the road, or on the side of the building facing the road...it was not.

At first, I thought Google Maps was out-dated and that five-guys had been replaced by a new, modern block of flats - turns out, it hadn't and Google Maps just wasn't accurate enough for my small Monkey brain.

My friend pointed out there was some stairs and it could be around the other side...and she was bang on the money.

So we found some stairs nearby, and found the rear of the building (which was flats and an underground car park)...Well, not underground, but under-building.

As predicted (not by me), there was a load of shops on the other side of the flats - and we bought lunch.

Due to it being lunch time and fairly busy, we decided to eat in the car in the romantic setting of Level 7 of a multi-storey car park l had found.

I had a hot-dog and chips and flat fanta (flanta) - though the drink did taste a little questionable (summer fruits flavour).

After this, since we were in the area, I visit my paternal grandfather's house - Peacehaven by name, Peacehaven by nature - it was an "old folks town" - with bungalows lining roads perpendicular to a promenade (road) - it was peaceful, and it certainly was a haven - and I still remember walking down from my grandfather's house down to the promenade (houses were sat upon a cliff).

Good times.

No, I don't entirely agree with the latest developments on Capel Avenue since 2009 when my family last went...but time moves on -

As a kid, my dream was to live in a little yellow bungalow by the sea...

From 3 Capel Avenue being wiped clean and replaced by a two-storey "smart-house" to the complete re-development of my former home-town, time indeed doesn't stand still - but I'm just so fucking glad that Google Maps has saved this time - back when life was different, I was young - back when my dream house served one (or two) lucky occupants.

On the other side of the road is my grandfather's house, this was only a few months after he passed - a skip outside, likely of old things from his house - but I remember vaugely the garage door - certainly from photographs I've seen.

But it's a time capsule, and I'm very thankful for it - and I'm sure as my life goes on, there's many more places I will want to save.

We then hung around Brighton a bit longer - had a bit of a fight with Google Maps, got bored and eventually headed back to my friend's house.

On this day, I also discovered that Hotwheels did a Braille car for blind people/visually impaired people - which I thought was incredibly inclusive and an ingenious idea...

That night, I headed down to Essex.

05/02/2023

The following day, after my now-standard breakfast of a breakfast baguette/roll/sandwich from either McDonalds, Cafe Elite or Cafe Delight, I headed down to my old home-town (Woking), and hang out with some of my friends - in addition to having a little walk to Tescos.

08/02/2023

After a few days in and around Essex, it was Wednesday 8th February.

On this day in 2019, I got my first career podium - a 3rd place at Lime Rock Park in my debut season - only pinching it by 0.129 seconds.

My next would come over 14 months (a year and two months) after this in April 2020.

On this day, I went to see a Roman Temple I'd been wanting to see for at least three months.

I'm most surprised at how clear it is - and for a 7,000 year old site - it's held up pretty well - you can still see the foundations where the outside would have been.

After spending the night in Essex, I'd eventually head home early on Thursday morning to attend my first Universal Credit meeting in about a month or so - the start of the year has been jam-packed, and with everything calming down - it's a good idea to get back into the normal swing of things.

11/02/2023

That weekend, it was the Bathurst 12hrs - which for the second special event in a row we got wiped out at turn 3 in a pile up not caused by ourselves.

The race...was difficult - after losing 3 laps due to this incident - we were in no contention for a win or podium - we just had to make do with the cards we had been dealt.

This crash was very much a blessing and a curse - this gave pretty much every car from 19th and behind SIGNIFICANT damage (this needing to be repaired) - although it would have been better if it had been further forward and taken more cars out - or given us more of a chance to avoid/lesser damage.

At the end of the 12hrs, a team whom started 44th (and probably in the pits) managed to finish a stellar 3rd place - I don't think they saw that one coming!

A total of only 28 cars finished - us finishing 25th after a very difficult day. I will say, I finished with 12x - having done approximately 4 hours (2 double stints) - although this is a massive approximation as we spent a portion of the race in the pits with damage because...Bathurst.