Three More F1 Cars, Three More Stepped Noses

2012 Sauber C31, with (from left) Kamui Kobayashi, Sergio Pérez and Esteban Gutierrez

2012 Red Bull Racing RB8

2012 Scuderia Toro Rosso STR7

It's becoming clear that McLaren are the only ones not going with a stepped nose this season. Whether that's to their detriment, we'll see in Australia, but what we can see now is what the entrants from Sauber, Toro Rosso and most importantly Red Bull will look like. Pre-testing, at least. The F1 world now gets to see what Adrian Newey has made of the new rules, and it essentially just meant lowering the existing nose and moving the exhaust upwards. Pretty straightforward, as it turned out, as the rest is simply an evolution of the dominant RB7. Toro Rosso and Sauber appear to have gone for very similar noses, with a round front and a top surface so flat you could use it as a dinner table. I think the phrase is "ugly but effective".

Red Bull were actually the ones that invented the "bull horns" you see here on the sides of the nose jump, which have been adopted and interpreted by most teams, apart from Ferrari, who just went with an unceremonious bump. Like the Lotus E20, the cool livery helps tone down the height change (although not as well IMO), and the smooth curves on the edges of the nose look much better than the other two cars revealed today. Red Bull's "B-Team" - which actually has to operate as a separate entity to satisfy the FIA that Red Bull aren't somehow running four cars - have gone for narrower sidepod openings, but otherwise the basic wings are very similar, although the "A-Team" has an extra ¬ shape on it. It also has the aforementioned ironing board on the front, which does not look pretty, although the rise inside the bull horns is more gradual on the Toro Rosso. Sauber carries it off better somehow, perhaps because the very straight nose is followed by an also-very-straight front half of the chassis and a straight-edged fin on the spine of the car.

All three have again gone for the long front wing struts, although the Sauber's gets shorter as it goes down from nose to wing, which the Toro Rosso's kind of does, but is shorter overall anyway. Err, what else can I say? They all have pushrod front suspension and pullrods at the rear, whereas Ferrari is the first team since Arrows in 2000 to use pullrods at the front. The way you can tell is by looking straight-on at each end of the car and seeing whether the diagonal piece of carbon fibre is sloping upwards (push) or downwards (pull). There's no particular advantage to using one or the other, the only real difference is that pushrods need the rockers (which connect the rods to the inboard springs) to be high up, hence the higher front ends using them, whereas pullrods are the opposite way round, lowering the centre-of-gravity and lightly improving the aerodynamics. McLaren could've experimented with pullrods for their lower front nose, but maybe they did and decided it made no significant difference.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. You can see the rest for yourself, below:

It sort of looks like the chassis horns are sitting on top of the nose

Red Bull RB8

Toro Rosso STR7

Toro Rosso STR7

Toro Rosso STR7

Sauber-Ferrari C31

Sauber C31

Sauber C31

Sauber-Ferrari C31

Click them to enlarge them if you haven't already. This weekend is the first full testing session in Jerez, so I'll try to pick up on what happens there and report it here. Stay tuned! I write non-F1 stuff as well.

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Lotus E20 To Be Powered By Ice Cream and Frog's Legs

2012 Lotus E20

After Caterham, McLaren, Ferrari and Force India, we now have the fifth F1 car unveiling of this season, courtesy of Lotus F1. Somehow the stepped nose design is smoother here than on the other three to feature it, although the black paint might be helping by toning it down a bit. Joining the CT01, MP4-27, F2012 and VJM05 is the equally-sexy-named E20, which sounds like a sun cream that's half as effective, but is actually meant to signify the 20th anniversary of the Enstone factory it's made in... as well as carrying on the tradition of every Lotus starting with the letter E.

After Vitaly Petrov, Nick Heidfeld and later Bruno Senna only managed a so-so season last year, despite a very promising start, new driver line up Kimi "Ice(cream)man" Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean will be hoping for a better end to this season, as well as the same kind of start. We'll find that out in due course, but for now the JPS-homage is looking good, and the stepped nose has been done in a similar way to Force India's car, in that the ridges on the side (originally done by Red Bull a couple of years ago) satisfy the new height regulations, while the middle section is allowed a smoother ascent. This makes it look better than the Ferrari F2012.

It would also appear to improve the visibility

I can't really think of anything more to add, as the rest is basically the same kind of thing as the rest of the grid, so here are some more pictures, borrowed from F1 Fanatic:

Left to right: Jerome D'Ambrosio (3rd driver), Romain Grosjean, Eric Boullier (team boss), Kimi Räikkönen

Below is also a nice long video of the unveiling, as well as a tour of Enstone. There's a technical interview at 15:07:

Uploaded: 5/2/12

Running Time: 21:04

Views When Posted: 305

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Jenson Button's 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 For Sale

One Careful Owner... is what this car would like now.

Just about keeping it F1-related, this, as the title states, is a 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7, the ancestor to the 911 GT3 and regarded by most Porsche fans as the greatest 911 of all time. It also looks lovely in black. Originally built to homologate Porsche's racing 911s in the 1970s, they met the 500-car minimum requirements and then sold 1090 more of them because they were so lusted after by rich folk. 911s work best when they're as pure as possible, and a stripped out, sports-focused one from the 70s is, for many, as pure and as good as it gets. Modern-day rich folk looking to stand out against the myriad GT3s should turn their attention to this very car, as - and here's the F1 bit - it's now up for sale, and the current owner is some bloke called Jenson Button.

Porsche nerds will remember this car for its stiffer springs, bigger brakes, wider rear tyres and the 2.7-litre H6 engine producing 210bhp, enough to propel the 975kg car from 0-60 in 5.7 seconds and on to 152mph, making it the fastest German car of the time (although this is the more luxurious, 1075kg RS Touring version). Others remember it fondly for its colourful Fuchs wheels with matching side stickers and the iconic "Ducktail" spoiler. While most were sold in white and many were bright orange or a very '70s shade of acid green, this is tastefully finished in black with red details. According to the advert, it was owned originally by Mario Angiolini, founder of the Italian racing team 'Joli Club', before Jenson Button bought it two years ago, perhaps as a present to himself for winning the 2009 Formula 1 World Championship with Brawn GP (now Mercedes GP). I get the feeling that F1 drivers are generally fans of Porsches. Mark Webber has a 911 Turbo and GT2 RS (also in black), Adrian Sutil has a TechArt GT2 with 620bhp (bought before the official 620bhp GT2 RS existed) and a Cayenne, Nick Heidfeld has a 959 S, and I bet the list doesn't end there. Maybe it's the risk of fiery death mixed with the signature precision handling and pure driver focus.

Anyway, this particular F1 star appears not to have the need for a '73 RS 2.7 any more, which will make at least one person very happy, as this particular RS Touring comes with *breathes*: Limited Slip Differential (LDS), head rests in leather, a sliding sunroof, heated rear window, retractable seat belts, driver's side door mirror (that's an extra?), fog lights, engine light and rubber strips on the front and rear bumpers. Lavishly upholstered indeed, and it has also had around £30k spent on restoring it since 2008. Of course, all '73 RS 2.7s are worth a lot these days, being held in the regard they are and with only 1590 cars ever made, and celebrity attachment can work wonders for a classic 911 - the 911S Steve McQueen owned and used in the opening scene of the Le Mans movie sold for well over $800,000! As such, this matching-numbers car with left-hand-drive and around 25,000 miles on the clock, previously owned by two motorsports personalities (albeit one far better-known than the other), is currently on sale for £209,850. If I had the means, I would be all over this, and frankly you'd have to really hate 911s not to feel the same about the immaculate example of an all-time classic sports car.

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Video Saturday - F That

Uploaded: 29/1/12

Running Time: 3:58

Views When Posted: 157,234

To continue what appears to be an F1 theme on SBV8 this month, here is a video of someone getting a ride in a two-seat Formula 1 car (with a V10 engine, no less) around the eastern half of the Yas Marina Circuit she won't forget... well, actually she might not remember all of it, as the apparently ineffective seatbelts and lack of HANS device turned this poor woman into more of a bobble-head G-Meter than a lucky passenger. This is a visual demonstration of what a Formula One or GP2/3 driver has to put up with for at least 90 minutes, giving you one more reason to appreciate how fit a racing driver has to be, and explaining why most of them have necks like tree trunks after a while. There are two ways to watch this video; you can either laugh at someone being beaten up by a car (high-speed braking is particularly entertaining), or you can be all shocked at the somewhat lazy attitude to safety involved. I won't judge you either way, but if you must know, I did the former.

If you want to some more appreciating of how uncomfortable the best job in the world really is, here's an X-Ray of the Toyota TF109 that shows you what shape you have to fold yourself into before you can do the above:

Click To Enlarge

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Two More F1 Cars, Two More Stepped Noses...

Ferrari F2012

Force India VJM05

Well, after McLaren and Caterham showed us two ways to see the new rules about lower noses, Ferrari and Force India have suggested that, sadly, most of the grid will be ugly at the front. Introducing the Ferrari F2012 and the Force India VJM05, one car expected to win the championship and one car expected to score a decent haul of points and perhaps bother the top runners this season. This year the Indian team is actually called Sahara Force India, making this probably the only racing car in the world sponsored by a desert. More inside.

Weirdly, it's actually the Force India that appears to have made a smoother job of it, with Ferrari being quite blunt about the fact that the nose has to jump up to meet the chassis and the Indian car having two ridges on the edges that meet the height regulations, while allowing the top surface a slightly smoother and more gradual ascent. Of course, neither look as good as the McLaren MP4-27's lower front bulkhead, which is the same height as the new nose and allows a super-smooth straight line where nose meets car. Hopefully Red Bull managed that too, although we won't find out until the other side of the weekend. The rest of the Force India appears to be an evolution of last year's car, sans blown diffuser of course, while the all new front wing prominently features two suspiciously wing-shaped cameras right at the front...

If something happens on track, Force India will be the first to know

Ferrari, meanwhile, has said from the start that this new car is going to be an aggressive design, by which they mean they aren't holding back with this car after a slightly lacklustre season last year (lacklustre in that they didn't win the championship, managing only one race win in the end). That could make the F2012 one to look out for, although looking out for it might be a thankless task if they plan on keeping the nose like that. As team boss Stefano Domenicali says, though, looks alone are not so important in F1, because it's about how effective it all is. Indeed, people didn't like the new rules overhaul in 2009 resulting in very wide front wings and very tall narrow ones (I was one of them, although I've got used to it), but the racing it's provided has been excellent, so big deal. Hopefully before the end of the year, at which point the noses will be more refined anyway, we'll have become used to this new change as well, however ugly it is.

To be fair to Ferrari, their new exhaust is better integrated than the McLaren's, which features a bulbous exit out of each side of the rear of the sidepods (which are tightly-packed, à la RB7), whereas the Italian car's exhausts fire straight at the rear wing, with the bodywork almost vacuum-formed over them, leaving a sloping section between the exhausts and the spine of the car which perhaps channels yet more air to the lower part of the rear wing. I suspect these lower parts might see more aero attention through the year. As well as the usual vertical plane ahead of each sidepod, now a two-piece affair, there's also a busy new front wing, held in place by very long struts, something Ferrari did last year that also appears to have caught on at Force India. We've seen some interesting designs for these struts before - the 2004 "walrus nose" on the Williams FW26 springs immediately to mind - and maybe streamlined ones like these are the new trend... until the FIA finds a reason to ban them, of course. In line with another recent trend, Ferrari's fifty-eighth Formula 1 car features pull-rod suspension all round (replacing a pushrod system like you find in DTM cars, as well as the Lamborghini Aventador and Aston Martin One-77). The advantages of pull-rod suspension include a lower centre of gravity and better aerodynamics, and at the rear it creates the triangular shape seen on the Red Bull RB7 last year. For a full description of the new car, see this microsite.

The driver lineup at Ferrari is the same, with Force India outing the convicted Adrian Sutil in order for former Williams rookie Nico Hülkenberg to take his seat alongside the impressive Paul Di Resta, and Ferrari test driver Jules Bianchi has moved ships to Force India in order to take part in at least nine Friday Practice sessions this season, although he is still a part of the Ferrari Driver Academy.

That's all there really is to say about that. For everything else that's happened thus far, see the Winter 2011/12 article below this one, although before you leave I should inform you that Indian driver Narain Karthekeyan has been confirmed as Hispania Racing Team's second driver, maybe even for a whole season. That would make a change at the lowly Spanish team...

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Formula 1 - Winter 2011/12

2012 McLaren MP4-27

Quite a lot happens between Formula 1 seasons. Rules can change, drivers can retire, return and realise their dreams of F1 stardom at last with their first drive, and teams can change as well. Here's a roundup of all the stories and updates between the 2011 and 2012 Formula 1 seasons, the latter of which starts at the Australian GP on the third weekend of March. Also, there's some serious gossip about Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Sutil at the bottom...

News highlights:

(28/11/11) Patrick Head has ended his direct involvement with the Williams F1 team, after co-founding it with Sir Frank Williams in 1977. He is still a shareholder, and will now move into Williams Hybrid Power, which does things like the energy-recuperating flywheel I saw at the Goodwood FOS, which was used by Porsche in the 911 GT3-R Hybrid to win the 2010 Nürburgring 24H. It was a shame for him to leave the team after their worst-ever season, something he didn't expect. The weekend between the Korean and Indian GPs marked seven years since Williams have won a race, which was achieved by Juan-Pablo Montoya at the Brazilian GP in 2004...

(5/12/11) Mercedes has had a good winter so far, with their factory team deciding to race with AMG sponsorship on their 2012 cars, promoting their in-house tuning arm, and Surrey-based McLaren-Mercedes becoming the first ever carbon-neutral Formula 1 team. Well, I guess it's easy to be carbon neutral when you're not racing the cars any more.

(8/12/11) Famed Formula One medic Professor Sid Watkins has stepped down as FIA Institute President after eight years in the role, marking his retirement from full-time involvement in motorsport after a career spanning 50 years. The neurosurgeon was promoted to the highest medical role after his close friend Ayrton Senna died in 1994, ensuring that safety in the sport increased tenfold. As a result, there hasn't been a dead Formula 1 driver in over 17 years.

(15/12/11) After Colin Kolles left Hispania Racing Team on 15th December, his position as team boss has been filled by Luis Perez-Sala of Spain, who raced 26 Grands Prix for Minardi from 1988-89 and has been promoted from being the team's sporting advisor.

(1/1/12) 1992 World Driver's Champion Nigel Mansell and aerodynamic wizard Adrian Newey picked up New Year's Honours in 2012, with Mansell getting a CBE for services to children and young people, and Newey getting an OBE for services to motorsport. Sir Frank Williams once said that to make Formula 1 a truly fair and even sport, you would have to ban Adrian Newey! The 55-year-old has engineered cars responsible for 8 World Driver's Championship titles, including Mansell's Williams in '92, who showed the kind of domination we've been seeing from Red Bull, where Newey currently works. Yup, still got it.

(4/1/12) Japanese drive Kamui Kobayashi auctioned off a specially-designed helmet to raise money in order to aid his country after a devastating "perfect storm" of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. The helmet, featuring a special design by Linkin Park member Joe Hahn, raised $19,000 for the charity Music For Relief, which in total has raised $700,000 to aid Japan.

(9/1/12) After joining Lotus-Renault GP, Kimi Räikkönen will test a 2010-spec Renault ahead of the first test session at Valencia, allowing him a chance to re-familiarise himself with Formula 1 cars after a stint rallying with Citroën and a brief foray into American oval racing. The Finn, 32, is very positive about joining Lotus after meeting with the team and going to a seat fitting for the new car.

(11/1/12) Meanwhile, Polish driver Robert Kubica has injured his leg, fracturing his right tibia, a bone he broke in his horrendous crash in a rally car in Andorra a year ago when he nearly severed his right arm. This definitely puts him out of the running for this season, although complications with the Renault team (now Lotus) that he was with have meant that even in 2013, he most likely won't be racing with them. His clear skill is not represented by his win record of just one, the 2008 Canadian GP, but he had lacklustre cars for the next two years (although Renault improved through 2010). Nevertheless, he is being linked to Ferrari, as has been the case for a while, as a potential replacement for Brazilian No. 2 driver Felipe Massa next season. If this actually happened, he would be the second Renault driver to move to Ferrari after much rumours to that effect, the other of course being Fernando Alonso.

(17/1/12) Bruno Senna fills the second seat at Williams F1, meaning that Rubens Barrichello is currently out of a drive for what would've been his 20th Formula 1 season, which personally I think is sad. I wanted him to reach a nice round 20. The only spot left to fill at this point is the second seat at Hispania Racing Team, who currently has Spañard Pedro de la Rosa at the helm of one of their cars. Oh, I'm also forced to point out that Senna is racing at Williams 18 years after his uncle Ayrton raced there in his final year of, well, everything...

(23/1/12) Lotus-Renault's clever new Reactive Suspension system, which uses brake torque to prevent the car diving under braking to keep the car level and improve aerodynamics, has now been outlawed by the FIA, according to a Williams spokesperson. This is after the system received initial approval from the FIA, as it doesn't count as driver-activated aerodynamic aid or active aero device, because it's purely mechanical. Alas, they appear to have decided it's still not allowed. Renault have tried hiding an active ride height system in the front of the car before, and it was banned then too. If at first you don't succeed...

(23/1/12) Mark Webber will be the first of the two Red Bull drivers to sample the new RB8 in testing, before handing it over to Sebastian Vettel for the last two days of the four-day test at Jerez starting next Thursday (7th Feb). The car will be revealed three days earlier. Maybe setting times for Seb-Vet to beat is less demotivating than watching him set times you don't beat...

(25/1/12) Kimi Räikkönen has officially polished off all the Magnums and Smirnoff within a mile radius of the Paul Ricard Circuit in Spain, as he much enjoyed the two-day test in a 2010-spec Renault. He drove a total of 666km, which should make him beastly in Jerez next Thursday. He has apparently integrated with the team well and is looking forward to the season. More here.

(25/1/12) Pirelli have announced their new tyres for the 2012 season. Surprisingly, they're round pieces of black rubbery stuff with something painted on the outer sidewalls, a major change to last year. All right, seriously though, the new "P Zero" dry compounds for this year (still Super-Soft, Soft, Medium [white] and Hard) will each be softer, thus grippier, have longer peak performance, but still last the same amount of time. So in other words, they reach their peak faster than last year's tyres, have more overall grip, but still "drop off the cliff" at roughly the same point as before. As for the "Cinturato" rain tyres, the Intermediate compound is unchanged from last year, while the Full Wet compound has been improved. Amusingly, Pirelli reckon teams want their tyres again because of the exciting racing they provided. Yeah, it can't possibly be that they want the same tyres for more consistent data to work with when devising pit strategies or anything like that...

In terms of technical updates, the two biggies are the lowered nose cone, designed to lower the risk of the nose hitting another driver in a T-Bone collision, and the ban on blown diffusers, meaning exhausts must now exit away from the rear diffuser, sticking out of the side pods. McLaren and others are firing the exhaust gases at the lower part of the rear wing now. The lack of forced exhaust also means you won't get that weird grinding or machine-gun noise when they go through a corner, which is nice. On top of those, there's also the ban on a new suspension system mentioned above, which could act as a mechanical aerodynamic aid.

So far the only car reveals have been McLaren and Caterham, with very, umm, differing designs. There will be two more tomorrow, which you can find on the homepage when they appear on The Intertubes for me to copy and paste here. Ferrari should've unveiled their car by now, but unfortunately it's been much snowier in Maranello than it has in Berkshire, so they had to cancel the launch event. After tomorrow and Red Bull's reveal on Monday, the rest of the grid will show itself at the first test, which is on Thursday 7th February. It's the first of three long weekends for testing, all of which are as follows:

First Testing - Jerez
February 7-10

Second Testing - Cataluña
February 21-24

Third Testing - Cataluña
March 1-4

I will try to keep an eye on how it all goes. In the meantime, the Teams and Drivers for 2012 will be as follows:

Red Bull Racing Renault
1 Sebastian Vettel (DEU)
2 Mark Webber (AUS)

McLaren Mercedes
3 Jenson Button (GBR)
4 Lewis Hamilton (GBR)

Ferrari
5 Fernando Alonso (ESP)
6 Felipe Massa (BRA)

Mercedes GP
7 Michael Schumacher (DEU)
8 Nico Rosberg (DEU)

Lotus Renault
9 Kimi Räikkönen  (FIN)
10 Romain Grosjean (FRA)

Force India Mercedes
11 Paul Di Resta (GBR)
12 Nico Hülkenberg (DEU)

Sauber Ferrari
14 Kamui Kobayashi (JPN)
15 Sergio Pérez Mendoza (MEX)

Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari
16 Daniel Ricciardo (AUS)
17 Jean-Eric Vergne (FRA)

Williams Renault
18 Bruno Senna (BRA)
19 Pastor Maldonado (VEN)

Caterham Renault [Formerly Team Lotus]
20 Heikki Kovalainen (FIN)
21 Jarno Trulli (ITA)

HRT Cosworth
22 Pedro De La Rosa (ESP)
23 Narain Karthekeyan (IND)

Marussia Cosworth [Formerly Virgin Racing]
24 Timo Glock (DEU)
25 Charles Pic (FRA)

Lastly, here's some gossip:

Like, Oh Em Gee guys, there's like totes some serious D.R.A.M.A happening up in here!

You see, Adrian Sutil was all like "Take this, du Schwein!" at Eric Lux after the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix, and now a judge was all like "BAN HAMMER LOLZ" until he ended up with a suspended 18-month term and forced €200k donation to charity.

This you know by now, but after his total BFF Lewis Hamilton failed to appear to the court case, due to its proximity to the MP4-27 launch, Adrian's all like "He's a coward" and shit like that, saying like "I don't want to be friends with someone like that, if you ask me he's not a man". LEIK OMG BURNED, RITE?! So now because Lewis doesn't mind making jokes about stuff that the press can construe as accusations of racism or whatever (Monaco '11), McLaren have stopped him from responding in case he says the wrong thing or, like, stirring occurs. Safe. When a reporter asked about it though, after a Macca spokesperson intervened, Lewis said "I'll listen to him". But what does this mean??????

Seems like Hammi's having another break-up. Can you believe it? Like, SCANDALOUS peeps!

And stuff like that.

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McLaren Isn't As Ugly As Caterham. Thank Goodness!

On the left is a problem with the new rules. On the right is a simple solution to it.

We now know what two of this year's Formula 1 cars will look like going into the first testing session at Jerez on 9th February. Both of these cars are British (well, Caterham is a British name) but only one of them doesn't make me want to vomit. On the left we have the Caterham F1 CT01 (they were green Lotus last year) and the McLaren MP4-27, which gets around a new rule that demands lower nose cones without asking for a different-sized monocoque, which has caused the "stepped nose" on the Caterham and maybe the Ferrari F12 (or whatever alphabet soup they call it), if rumours are accurate, to appear and damage our eyes. Of course, we'll know which one is the faster nose when we see which one the Red Bull RB8 has on it. Pictures and specs inside.

First, the Caterham. Despite costing millions of pounds, they've somehow made it look cheap. The basic shapes throughout the car arguably make sure of that, but like a fat anchovy on a mild pizza, the whole thing is dominated by that nose. WorldCarFans call it "radically-stepped", while some are banding the word "platypus" about (because it looks like it's made of spare parts?) and many will make do with a simple and direct "fuck-ugly". Well, not during race programs. The problem is that the extreme point of the nose (the very front, if you will) has to be about 7cm lower for crash test regulations, although what brought that idea on I have no idea, so because Caterham want a flat nose for aerodynamic smoothness, they've given it one... which then meets the chassis in a blunt and very abrupt manner.

Team boss Mike Gascoyne has responded to criticisms as follows: "As we're the first car out it is obviously stirring up a lot of debate, but because of the 2012 regulations I think you'll probably be seeing this type of nose on most of the cars this year. Our challenge is that you always want to get the chassis as high as possible to allow clean air flow to the underside of the car, and what you see on the CT01 is our solution to that." Interesting solution, but McLaren's solution is substantially more elegant. The extreme point of the nose is indeed slightly lower, as you'll see below, but the nose then glides smoothly upwards to meet the chassis in much the same way last year's car did, because they've managed to make the front of the chassis lower. The result is a still very flat-looking nose with a slightly steeper angle than last year's car as a result. It looks very smooth though. I like smooth racing cars.

Click to enlarge

Also present on the MP4-27 is a mullet, a development of the little black bits that appeared last year, which apparently could be snapped off if the driver wanted less rear aero during the race. The spine of the car is also pointed slightly outwards, a reversal of last year's going by the image on the left. The rest is basically as it was before, but McLaren were keen to stress that while "This is a beautiful car, unlike many you'll see" [Jenson Button], this is not the exact car you'll see on the grid in Australia late next month. The first testing session is next Thursday, and I assume they still have many things to try out that they can only be sure of by actually lapping the track with them, as opposed to the extensive simulator work all teams must do [no in-season testing]. As long as you keep the smooth nose, that's just fine.

More pictures below, none of which are mine, I feel I should point out. There's a lot of anti-copyright stuff in the news these days......

Caterham CT01

McLaren MP4-27

The L-shaped sidepods of 2011 have been substituted for more conventional flat-topped ones

Jenson Button is now the number one driver in the McLaren team, after being the first McLaren driver to beat Lewis Hamilton

Last year's car on the right, this year's opposite. You can see the exhausts now, as blown diffusers are banned

A full winter news summary is pending, and of course I will be all over the 2012 Formula 1 season when it starts, so stay tuned!

EDIT(19:55) - The tech specs have appeared on Speedhunters, and are as follows:

MP4-27 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION

CHASSIS
Monocoque -  McLaren-moulded carbonfibre composite incorporating front and side impact structures

Front suspension - Inboard torsion bar/damper system operated by pushrod and bell crank with a double wishbone arrangement

Rear suspension - Inboard torsion bar/damper system operated by pullrod and bell crank with a double wishbone arrangement

Electronics - McLaren Electronic Systems. Including chassis control, engine control, data acquisition, dashboard, alternator, sensors, data analysis and telemetry.

Bodywork - Carbon-fibre composite. Separate engine cover, sidepods and floor. Structural nose with integral front wing Driver-operated drag reduction system

Radio - Kenwood

Race wheels - Enkei

Brake - callipers Akebono, master cylinders Akebono

Batteries - GS Yuasa Corporation

Steering - McLaren power-assisted

Instruments - McLaren Electronic Systems

Paint solutions - AkzoNobel Car Refinishes using Sikkens products

ENGINE
Type - Mercedes-Benz FO 108Z

Capacity - 2.4 litres

Cylinders - 8

Maximum RPM - 18,000

Bank Angle - 90°

Piston Bore - maximum 98mm

Number of Valves - 32

Fuel - ExxonMobil High Performance Unleaded (5.75% bio fuel)

Spark Plugs - NGK racing spark plugs specially designed for Formula 1

Lubricants - Mobil 1

Weight - 95kg (minimum FIA regulation weight)

KERS Hybrid
Type - Mercedes-Benz
e-Motor - Engine-mounted electrical motor/generator
ESS - Integrated energy storage cells and power electronics
Power - 60 kW

Transmission
Gearbox - McLaren-moulded carbon-fibre composite Integral rear impact structure
Gears - Seven forward and one reverse
Gear Selection - McLaren seamless shift, hand-operated
Clutch - Carbon/carbon, hand-operated
Lubricants - Mobil 1

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