New York artist David Macaluso has painted a portrait of Lewis Hamilton using oil taken from the McLaren MP4-23 Formula One car Hamilton used to win the 2008 World Championship.
Commissioned by McLaren partner Mobil 1, the painting will be unveiled at the British Grand Prix next weekend.
Apparently next week is National Oil Check Week and Mobil will be running a competition where you can win one of 50 limited edition prints of the portrait.
Apparently the Mobil 1 oil was ‘extremely smooth and very particle-rich’, making for a ‘great painting medium’:
I’ve been recycling used motor oil into paintings since 2005, so it was exciting to do a portrait of Lewis, and it was a privilege. When people look at my portrait of Lewis Hamilton, I want them to know it contains the Mobil 1 that circulated inside his Mercedes-Benz engine.
Lewis Hamilton liked the results, too:
I’ve always known that the Mobil 1 in my race car is an important component that can give us an edge over our rivals in some circumstances, but I’d never have guessed you could use it to paint with; the oil gives this picture a unique look and feel.
Another McLaren partner has also been busy making automotive art.
Ever wondered what would happen if Lewis Hamilton’s Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 car was driven through 1,200 liters of paint? AkzoNobel has.
After months of planning, Hamilton’s MP4-24 was driven through pools of red and silver paint. Unsurprisingly this resulted in paint being sprayed everywhere with the splashes captured on two 50 square metre canvases.
I’m not sure the results are as impressive as Macaluso’s portrait but take a look at the making of video below and see what you think.
Formula One and ads don’t really go together any more now that the BBC has taken over from ITV (at least in the UK.)
No longer do we need to worry about missing something vital just as the producer cuts to an ad break – although for those without the ability to pause live TV this has been replaced with the new problem of when to go for a ‘comfort break’.
But just because we hate ads interrupting races doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a good commercial on our own time. So with that in mind, here are five of the best F1-themed adverts, ever.
Sky – Monsters: The awesome Sky ad on the right is by Italian advertising agency 1861. It is worth having a browse around their site just to see some of their other print and video work.
Tag Heuer – The Duel: In 1969, Tag Heuer introduced the world’s first automatic chronograph. The ‘Monaco’ was radical for its time in also being the first square-cased, water resitant watch in history. A year later Steve McQueen wore a blue Monaco in the classic motor racing film Le Mans. Now, forty years later, Lewis Hamilton stars alongside Steve McQueen in a video promoting the Monaco. If you guess who will win you can win some nice prizes including a limited edition Monaco watch.
Honda – Impossible Dream: At the end of 2004 Honda were on a high. Their engines had driven BAR to second place in the Constructors’ Championship in a season dominated by Schumacher and Ferrari. In September of 2005 Honda purchased the remaining 55% of BAR to become an F1 constructor in their own right for the first time in nearly forty years. Over the next few years Honda would slip further and further down the results before selling the team to Ross Brawn in 2009.
But in December of 2005 the future still looked bright for Honda and they released the ‘Impossible Dream’ commercial, featuring British actor Simon Day riding and driving various Hondas through the New Zealand countryside. Starting on a monkey bike, he progresses from a Super Cub scooter to an ATV, an S500 sports car to a huge Gold Wing motor cycle to a FireBlade superbike. He blasts an S2000 down a gravel road and a TT bike up through a forest. An NSX, the supercar designed with Ayrton Senna’s help, makes an appearance before the beautiful 1965 RA272 F1 car morphs into the BAR 007. Finally, Day drives a powerboat off the edge of a waterfall only to emerge in a hot-air ballon.
Unfortunately for Honda, it really was an impossible dream.
Shell – Refuelling: In 1997 Shell took an airplane, a Formula One car and some cameras deep into the Mojave Desert. What they came out with was pure, unrefined awesomeness.
Shell – Circuit: We finish with another Ferrari/Shell ad that could possibly be the greatest motoring advert of all time. ‘Circuit’ features a stunning array of Ferraris from the last 60 years driving the ultimate street circuit through Rome, New York, Rio, Hong Kong and Monaco. The cars are beautiful but the sounds they make are sublime. Turn it up.
With the Chinese Grand Prix just days away, here is a video of a Chinese Formula One car made entirely from scrap metal. According to Jalopnik, this is the fourth of these replicas built by the Zhao brothers and it is capable of hitting 100mph. Whether you would want to drive something made from scrap while sitting on a folding chair at 100mph on the streets of China is debatable but you have to admit the end result looks pretty damn cool. Some might say it even looks better than some of the new 2009 F1 cars.
The video shows the adjustable rear wing and extensive ‘wind tunnel’ testing of the chassis. A number of ‘things’ are also highlighted with red circles but as my Chinese is non-existent I have no idea what they are.
Bernie Ecclestone has had a lot of criticism over his efforts to take Formula One to new markets in Asia and the Middle East but I think it’s pretty clear from this video that there are at least four guys in China who will be watching the race on Sunday.
It just wouldn’t be Formula One without race stewards applying controversial penalties and last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix started the season in fine form.
Hanging over the whole weekend was the question of the legality of the Brawn, Williams and Toyota diffusers. While Rubens Barrichello thinks his car would be quick even without the fancy diffuser and the race stewards declared it legal, Ferrari, Renault and Red Bull are taking their appeal to court on 14 April. Williams made a point by lodging a counter-protest against Ferrari and Red Bull only to withdraw it “in the interests of the sport.” I really hope the case is rejected but until then the results of the Australian Grand Prix and possibly Malaysia will be provisional.
The race itself was subject to some controversial decisions, too. In the final laps, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel put his car where Robert Kubica’s BMW was and a promising race ended badly for them both.
Vettel was quick to offer his appologies to Kubica and team boss Mario Theissen and was duly handed a 10 place penalty for causing the accident. But was it really his fault? It looked like a racing incident to me. Michael Schumacher seems to think so too, telling Germany’s Bild newspaper:
He (Vettel) was on the inside – he couldn’t make his car dissolve into thin air.
And Kubica himself isn’t too sure either:
It’s difficult to say who is at fault. I think he was a bit optimistic. If that was the last corner of the last lap it’s OK, but in the first race it’s important to score the points. It’s important you understand what position you are in.
Could it be that Vettel was penalised for being too honest? If he had just kept his mouth shut and not been so apologetic perhaps the stewards would have let the incident pass.
Jarno Trulli was another disappointed driver. Before the race even started, Toyota had been found guilty of having a flexible rear wing but after some hasty modifications they were allowed to start from the pits. After a great drive from Trulli we again had the situation where one of the drivers on the podium later has his trophy taken away by the stewards. Ironically it was all caused by the Vettel – Kubica shenanigans. Trulli’s Toyota slipped off the track under the safety car and Lewis Hamilton had no choice but to pass him. According to the rules, overtaking under the safety car is permitted “if any car slows with an obvious problem”, like running off the track.
The problem seems to be that McLaren, understandably nervous about illegal passing manouvers after the 2008 Belgian Grand Prix where Hamilton was deemed to have passed Räikkönen illegally, thought they should hand third place back to Trulli so Lewis slowed and allowed him to pass. Here is a video showing Trulli slipping off the track and Hamilton (legally) going past:
Unfortunately I haven’t found any video of Trulli taking the place back but Jarno clearly felt he had little choice:
I thought he had a problem so I overtook him as there was nothing else I could do.
The 25 second penalty handed down destroyed a great drive by Trulli and Toyota announced their intentions to appeal the decision:
There are circumstances surrounding the incident that we feel have not been taken into consideration. On Sunday, we announced our intention to appeal the ruling to the International Sporting Court of Appeals. We are currently undertaking procedures to formally appeal the ruling within 48 hours, collecting data to be used as proof of our position.
It’s all very confusing. Last year the stewards came in for some criticism over their decisions and according to an FIA meeting back in November of 2008, a number of new stewarding arrangements were to be put in place in 2009, in particular the following:
Following the race, a short written explanation of stewards decisions will be published on the FIA website. This will supplement the formal stewards decision which largely defines the breach of the rules.
The FIA have an awful lot of documentation on their website about lap times and scrutineering checks but the Stewards’ Report is conspicuously absent.
I do hope this information is posted soon as it is important to see how the race stewards arrived at their decisions. At least a Ferrari wasn’t involved so there are no conspiracy theories. Yet.
In a few weeks time Formula One will return to the screen on BBC after twelve years at ITV and in preparation for this the BBC have been developing their new Formula One website. Its importance to the BBC is reflected in the fact that the Formula One link comes right after football in the main navigation.
There’s some good content on the site already and this video in particular of ‘F1’s greatest hits’ has some of the greatest moments in Formula One of the last twenty years. There are crashes (Mansell’s tyre exploding at Adelaide in 1986, Schumacher taking out Damon Hill in 1994), amazing passes (Hakkinen’s pass of Schumacher in Belgium in 2000, Alonso passing Schumacher on the outside of 130R at Suzuka in 2005) and things we just don’t see any more (wingtip vortices and drivers leaping out of their cars for a punchup.)
The BBC have announced that they will use The Chain by Fleetwood Mac as the music for the intro to their Formula One footage when they take over the broadcast rights this year. This should please a lot of fans, particularly these guys at the TopGear website. It seems nostalgia and a twelve-year gap has elevated the old BBC intro music into some kind of hymn to F1. Murray Walker is clearly delighted as, according to the Telegraph‘s Andrew Baker, when he found out the BBC was going to use the old tune the 85-year-old presenter raised his hands and started to clap in time with Fleetwood Mac’s beat, exclaiming “Yes, yes, yes!”
I admit, it is a good tune. Here’s a video of the original BBC intro from the 1988 Australian Grand Prix:
I was in Australia when the BBC was broadcasting F1 so I never developed the same attachment to The Chain. I do however have memories of Channel 9’s Wide World of Sports (or was it Sports Sunday) playing short video segments featuring super slow motion shots of Formula One cars set to classical music. I used to love watching these so I turned to Google to see if I could find something on YouTube. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything which means either no-one has a copy of these little videos or I imagined the whole thing.
Either way I thought I would have a go at making my own version. So here is what you get when you take a nice YouTube ‘Tribute to active suspension era video‘ and mash it with Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue. I think it works but I’d love to hear what you think in the comments:
New York artist David Macaluso has painted a portrait of Lewis Hamilton using oil taken from the McLaren MP4-23 Formula One car Hamilton used to win the 2008 World Championship.
It just wouldn’t be Formula One without race stewards applying controversial penalties and last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix started the season in fine form.